(UK) Cameron lays out plans to save millions in NHS reform

The Times ^ | 11/3/2009 | David Rose

[markomalley]

David Cameron promised yesterday to cut the cost of running the NHS by a third while handing day-to-day management of the health service over to an independent body.

The Tory leader guaranteed that up to £1.5 billion of savings on bureaucracy would be reinvested elsewhere in the health service. He also pledged to extend “patient power” and to create a rebranded Department of Public Health if his party won the next election.

Experts said that the plans to make the NHS more independent under a new executive board lacked detail, risked the health service becoming an unaccountable quango and could mean that decisions to award NHS contracts were distorted by commercial interests.

In a speech setting out his priorities for the health service Mr Cameron promised “real-terms growth” in health spending every year but insisted that money could be better spent.

(snip)

“When patients not only have the power to choose where they get treated, but also the information to make an informed choice, then hospitals and GPs who don’t provide good care will have to raise their game,” Mr Cameron said.

(snip)

Private companies would be able to compete with existing hospitals or GPs to win contracts to provide services for the NHS. Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, has stressed that NHS organisations would remain Labour’s “preferred provider” for health service contracts.

[markomalley]

Wow...what a concept...let patients choose where to go. And, imagine, let the private sector compete for medicine. Sounds like a risky scheme to me! /s

And Obummer wants us to move in the direction that Britain is trying to move away from?

[Ulysse]

ping

[pieceofthepuzzle]

“And Obummer wants us to move in the direction that Britain is trying to move away from?”

Yes. This is something the MSM in this country never addresses, but the British are moving more toward privatization. Tragically funny how democrats are pushing us to ‘reform’ our system by emulating a system that now requires ‘reform’ itself.

[johnthebaptistmoore]

I’m not laughing.