Tim Montgomerie, blogger at Conservative Home, advises David Cameron to drop the Health and Social Care Bill: click here.
My comment to his post:
I am a GP in Tower Hamlets and therefore one of the many who have to actually deliver the health care. What I want is policies that help me deliver good quality primary care to my patients. Unfortunately, the politicians and Department of Health have for some years dreamt up policies that make my job harder, if not actually impossible. The basic problem seems to be a shocking disconnect between the aspirations (increasing patient ‘choice’, ‘modernisation’, ‘reform’) and the reality on the ground. One particular example is the issue of GP practice boundaries: all 3 parties want to abolish them. At first glance, this seems like a good idea: choice, who does not want choice. But you then need to ask: are there any unintended consequences, are there any risks, how will it work, will it work? These questions are not asked. And yet, abolishing GP practice boundaries will not actually deliver patient choice; it will make provision of good quality primary care more difficult, less efficient, and at times unsafe; it will cost more money. (Of course, there is a hidden agenda in this: it will suit some vested interests to deregulate English general practice.) For more documentation on this, see my blog at http://www.onegpprotest.org
I am perfectly happy to work with others to find ways to reform things (as opposed to sabotaging them), to make things work better. But it must be done honestly, in good faith, and the nuts and bolts of earthly reality must be taken seriously. Otherwise we will view you with contempt. As the late physicist Richard Feynman said in another context, ‘For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.’
