Free Republic

GPs are being paid millions by the NHS to ration referrals for operations, scans and even cancer tests, an investigation reveals today. Family doctors are being offered the financial incentives in a bid to slash the number of patients they send to hospital for a variety of procedures. The incentives mostly cover non-urgent referrals for hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, hearing tests and abdomen scans. But two health trusts have included urgent cancer scans in their schemes, and another two covered heart tests. Patient groups said the payments were ‘profoundly wrong’, while one MP likened them to ‘bribes’. Doctors’...

Britain’s most senior doctor has said the under-pressure NHS may be forced to abandon the concept of free healthcare for all. Prof. Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the NHS in England, said there were doubts over whether the taxpayer-funded model was “sustainable in the longer term”. He added that huge changes were needed—including less reliance on hospitals—if free treatment was to be preserved. He told the Guardian: “If the NHS continues to function as it does now, it’s going to really struggle to cope because the model of delivery and service that we have at the moment is not...