NHS reforms - govt talking point shot down in flames, in the BMJ

[muriel_volestrangler]

On the basis that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, England’s health secretary, Andrew Lansley, has said that his reforms for the NHS are needed because the country’s health outcomes are among the poorest in Europe. But are they?

The official ministerial briefing for the Health and Social Care Bill states that despite spending the same on healthcare, our rate of death from heart disease is double that in France. Although statistics from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) confirm that in 2006 the age standardised death rate for acute myocardial infarction was around 19/100 000 in France and 41/100 000 in the United Kingdom, comparing just one year—and with a country with the lowest death rate for myocardial infarction in Europe—reveals only part of the story. Not only has the UK had the largest fall in death rates from myocardial infarction between 1980 and 2006 of any European country, if trends over the past 30 years continue, it will have a lower death rate than France as soon as 2012.



These trends have been achieved with a slower rate of growth in healthcare spending in the UK compared with France and at lower levels of spending every year for the past half century. The most recent OECD spending comparisons show that in 2008, the UK spent 8.7% of its gross domestic product on health compared with 11.2% for France—28% more.

http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d566.full

[T_i_B]

1. "Health outcomes are among the poorest in Europe".

You have to ask who would the "health outcomes" be for when it's Andrew Lansley talking. You always get the feeling that he's more concerned about the outcomes for the top management at BUPA rather then patients.

To be honest I think that Andrew Lansley is one of the very worst minsters in the current government. There's only Grant Shapps I can think of who I dislike more as a minister.

[LeftishBrit]

2. Interesting

This corresponds with what I've experienced, and hear anecdotally from others. I have several elderly and/or chronically ill relatives and friends who need to make frequent use of the health service, and they feel that services, especially for those with serious illnesses, improved quite a lot in the last few years.

It is a little puzzling in fact that Labour, at the time of the election and after, were so much on the defensive; they should have trumpeted their recent achievements in health and education a bit more! Of course, that might have been made slightly more difficult, because they could not explicitly say, 'Since Labour took over from the Conservatives in *2007*, we have achieved the following..'

As regards most hated Ministers: I think my two are Andrew Lansley and Iain Duncan Smith. Lansley, because he is messing up our NHS, and because I think that, though he stays within the law, he is *fundamentally* corrupt: he is known to have accepted a donation for his office from a private health company when Shadow Health Secretary, and no doubt in general seeks to benefit the high-ups in such companies. He's slimy. I hate Duncan Smith, because he is so sanctimonious, and acts as though he is doing poor people a favour by cutting their benefits and forcing them to cease committing the sin of poverty! Of course, the most *dangerous* Minister is probably Osborne.

[T_i_B]

3. The question of "who do you dislike most as a minister"....

...is probably worthy of a thread in itself IMHO. May do just that later!

[non sociopath skin]

4. Hmm. Bit like having a discussion about which life-limiting disease we dislike most.

The Skin