NHS listening exercise - Have your say. Contributions deadline looming

[Donki]

If you want to put in your two pen'orth about the NHS, the dead line is tomorrow night (contributions due in by 31st May)

here

Thanks, will do, but tomorrow. Thanks for the link and the prompt.

Why? Providing the local decision makers are clinically competent, and locally accountable (I prefer directly elected commissioners) why should they not make decisions which are different in different parts of the country?

Treatment is being rationed all the time, mainly because the NHS is a total failure in terms of efficiency - but partly as an inevitable consequence of health inflation.

If one area decides that rare cancers are a higher priority than multiple IVF, but another decides the opposite, then that is completely acceptable. Very harsh for individuals, but totally "fair" in the aggregate.

If the local decision makers are locally accountable, you may be right, but I don't see how the commissioning GPs are going to be locally accountable.

Goodnight LFN
Nice "talking" with you.

Donki As I said, I would prefer some elected representatives to be among the commissioners - so the public aren't completely disconnected from the rationing decisions. GP-led commissioning doesn't have this element - which is one of the areas in which I think the government should go further in the decentralisation of power.

For an interesting take on the wider issues facing the NHS, tonight's R4 Analysis program - Unhealthy Expectations? is worth a listen.

This is the Transcript