Tory health bill challenges Labour on improvement plan
The health service would have a clear divide between purchasers and providers with ministers and the Department of Health having much less day to day involvement in its running under a bill published by the Conservatives.
The Tory plans present a political challenge to Gordon Brown's government to spell out how it plans to achieve improvements to the service, commentators say.
Under the Tory proposals a separate NHS board, which would still be subject to ministerial direction, would allocate resources, issue commissioning guidance and performance manage health authorities and primary care trusts, with family doctors being given real budgets to buy NHS care.
Monitor, the foundation trust regulator, would become a full economic regulator for healthcare. It would have a duty to promote competition, set the prices for NHS care and oversee market entry and exit for independent as well as NHS-run providers of care.
Healthwatch, a new patient and public involvement body, would work alongside the existing NHS inspectorate.
Andrew Lansley, the Conservative health spokesman, said the package would "give greater freedom to the NHS" and "get politicians and the Department of Health out of the day to day management of the NHS".
It also allowed for competition and choice to drive improvements, with polls showing that most of the public did "not care who provides the service" as long as it remained free at the point of use and of good quality.
The Conservatives, he said, would use opposition time or a private member's bill to put the proposed legislation before parliament.
He said that last year Mr Brown, when chancellor, appeared to be in favour of a more independent NHS, "but he seems to have reneged on that view".
Chris Ham, the former head of the Department of Health's strategy unit and professor of health service management at Birmingham University, said that while the details differed considerably, the thrust of the Conservatives' bill would have produced similar results as Blairite reforms.
"It begins to establish some clear blue water between Tory and Labour health reforms. It throws down the gauntlet to Gordon Brown and his health ministers to be much clearer about the mechanisms they want to use to drive further improvements in the NHS.
"Are they going to push through Blair's market-based reforms, or are they going to come up with an alternative Brownite version that is different both from where the Blairites were going and where the Tories are?"
Professor Ham said he was sceptical about how far politicians would in practice be willing or able to live with the effects of market-based reform in the NHS.
"But this sounds like a more coherent version of NHS independence combined with market-based reforms than the present government has been able to articulate."
From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/49ccf188-89b2-11dc-8dff-0000779fd2ac.html
The Tory plans present a political challenge to Gordon Brown's government to spell out how it plans to achieve improvements to the service, commentators say.
Under the Tory proposals a separate NHS board, which would still be subject to ministerial direction, would allocate resources, issue commissioning guidance and performance manage health authorities and primary care trusts, with family doctors being given real budgets to buy NHS care.
Monitor, the foundation trust regulator, would become a full economic regulator for healthcare. It would have a duty to promote competition, set the prices for NHS care and oversee market entry and exit for independent as well as NHS-run providers of care.
Healthwatch, a new patient and public involvement body, would work alongside the existing NHS inspectorate.
Andrew Lansley, the Conservative health spokesman, said the package would "give greater freedom to the NHS" and "get politicians and the Department of Health out of the day to day management of the NHS".
It also allowed for competition and choice to drive improvements, with polls showing that most of the public did "not care who provides the service" as long as it remained free at the point of use and of good quality.
The Conservatives, he said, would use opposition time or a private member's bill to put the proposed legislation before parliament.
He said that last year Mr Brown, when chancellor, appeared to be in favour of a more independent NHS, "but he seems to have reneged on that view".
Chris Ham, the former head of the Department of Health's strategy unit and professor of health service management at Birmingham University, said that while the details differed considerably, the thrust of the Conservatives' bill would have produced similar results as Blairite reforms.
"It begins to establish some clear blue water between Tory and Labour health reforms. It throws down the gauntlet to Gordon Brown and his health ministers to be much clearer about the mechanisms they want to use to drive further improvements in the NHS.
"Are they going to push through Blair's market-based reforms, or are they going to come up with an alternative Brownite version that is different both from where the Blairites were going and where the Tories are?"
Professor Ham said he was sceptical about how far politicians would in practice be willing or able to live with the effects of market-based reform in the NHS.
"But this sounds like a more coherent version of NHS independence combined with market-based reforms than the present government has been able to articulate."
From:
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/49ccf188-89b2-11dc-8dff-0000779fd2ac.html
Labels: Conservatives, labour cutbacks, NHS
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