Current Tory health plans are backward-looking and reactionary

I have long been depressed about Tory health policy, or lack thereof. The News of the World today does a head-to-head about whether Andy Burnham or Andrew Lansley would be better to run the NHS – and I give my verdict.  The answer, I say, is neither of them. The patient should become the consumer, as is the case in the healthcare system of every developed country. But this would require taking on the NHS establishment, which no party is committed to doing. Or, rather, Alan Milburn was committed to – and had actually started to enact. But that reform agenda came under attack from the Brownites and Andrew Lansley.

The Tory health policy, as it stands, defies understanding. There are various, welcome plans to broaden the supply of providers – but they start with a proposal to grant operational independence to the NHS bureaucracy. Cameron calls this the “NHS Independence Bill”; its intention is to assure the poor NHS staff that government will not be reorganizing them again, and that they will be spared what Cameron says is the “disruptive” influence of politicians.