Woo the EU? Theresa May should take tips from the dating game September 26, 2018 Winning votes in an election is a lot like dating. I was explaining the principles of campaigning during a Westminster Foundation seminar in Ghana when one of the young candidates hit on this perfect analogy for electoral success. When you start dating someone, you are keen to establish common interests. “You like Love Island? [...]
Taxpayers to foot £65m bill from Carillion redundancies September 25, 2018 Taxpayers are set to cough up £65m in redundancy payouts following the collapse of outsourcer giant Carillion. The liquidated construction services company, which bucked under the weight of a £1.5bn debt pile in January, has so far paid out £50m of the total £65m after thousands of workers were made redundant. The figures also [...]
Labour has faced crises before, but this is uncharted territory September 18, 2018 After a summer of turbulence, the Labour party conference will get underway in Liverpool next week. The stories swirling around the run-up centre on the current maelstrom of fanatical support for Jeremy Corbyn, the increasing despondence of moderate MPs, accusations of antisemitism at the heart of the party, all against a backdrop of online discussion [...]
Not what the doctor ordered: Spire suffers profit hit amid drop in NHS referrals September 18, 2018 UK private healthcare provider Spire was diagnosed with falling profits in the first six months of 2018, as a drop in referrals from the NHS ate away at the company’s projected core earnings. Spire Healthcare Group’s share price tumbled more than six per cent in early morning trading, after the firm predicted full-year expected earnings [...]
NHS GP charges: Switzerland shows why charging to visit a doctor needn’t be politically toxic September 7, 2015 The economic case for user charges in healthcare is easily explained. A well-designed system of charges for people accessing services can encourage cost-consciousness and reduce overuse. If people had to pay a share of their healthcare costs out of pocket, they would start asking their GPs (and other sources of information) about whether a [...]
Boozy Britain? When it comes to tax, drinkers are not only paying their way, they are subsidising teetotallers too September 3, 2015 There is a persistent belief that drinkers are a burden on the British taxpayer. In the narrative of ‘Booze Britain’, Accident & Emergency departments do little else but patch up the victims of drunks and it is often claimed that taxpayers foot a bill of around £20bn a year to deal with the effects of [...]
NHS orthodoxy is dying: Here’s how to put patients at the heart of healthcare September 1, 2015 Surveys often suffer from what is known as “social desirability bias”: when people sense that an opinion they hold, or a habit they engage in, is unfashionable, they are unlikely to be entirely honest about it in a survey. Instead, they may simply tell the interviewer what they think they are socially expected to [...]
Does NHS Survival have patients in mind? The only way to truly save the NHS is to liberate it from state control August 17, 2015 The summer is ebbing, football is back, and this weekend saw the launch of yet another campaign to “save the NHS”. The dramatically named NHS Survival – an “umbrella group bringing together patients, public and professionals” – echoes previous dire warnings that we had “24 hours to save the NHS”, or “14 days to save [...]
Why the NHS needs old-age reserves to mitigate galloping healthcare costs August 3, 2015 Do you remember the time when healthcare professionals used to argue that the NHS was adequately funded, and that further injections of money were not needed? Me neither, because there never was such a time. The NHS has always been “underfunded”, and the solution to its woes has always been just a few billion pounds [...]
Price tag: NHS medicine to have price labels under Jeremy Hunt proposals July 2, 2015 A price tag is to be put on prescription medicines in the UK under a plan to cut waste in the National Health Service, along with a stamp reading “funded by the UK taxpayer”. All pharmaceuticals over £20 will have an “indicative cost” on the packaging once the scheme is rolled out next year, as [...]