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This is heroic https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/17/government-doctors-boris-johnson-nhs-covid-19-central-power
When I say heroic, I mean the word to have a broad, loose definition.
There are people who should rightly shut up and go away from the world of health policy, for life.
People whose contribution simply didn't help, or as in certain cases, didn't actually happen.
People like, oooh, let's just pick a random example out off the air ... Dear Old Lord Lansley.
So.
What is Our Saviour And Liberator trying to retail us?
Gosh my old boots.
"our centralising approach to health and wellbeing in this country has diminished individual responsibility and has played a key part in determining our poor health outcomes"
"I don’t pretend that we got everything right in the 2012 Act,
AHEM AHEM A-FUCKING-HEM!
"... but the direction of travel was clear. It freed up NHS England to draw up its Five Year Forward View in 2014, which enjoyed widespread support,
Mmmmmmmmm
"and to be more ambitious in its 10-year plan last year"
which, like the FYFV, was a Treasury Munchkin bid document to get the NHS £
"Poor population health in the UK and the lack of capacity in social care are among the principal external factors hindering the NHS", says Lord L
I don't want to blind people with technical jargon, but this is what is known in the health policy trade as complete and unmitigated bullshit.
Does OSAL's nonsense get any worse?
Oh yes it does.
"But these are a result of a chronic failure to give autonomy and cash to local governments (as enabled under the 2012 Act) to address the underlying public health issues."
AHEM x X (where X = many) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/29/council-spending-on-local-services-down
What more?
"It would be a travesty if, just as the NHS gets the money it needs to transform towards a digital, innovative, outcomes-directed, patient-focused future, "
Um, it hasn't. It's had the money to keep everything NHS required going during a global respiratory pandemic, and before that, to get back NHS performance from dreadful to merely very bad.
"... central government misrepresents the lessons of Covid-19 in an attempt to shift blame and seize back central control."
Dear Old Lord Lansley: not paying attention to what is going on for well over a decade.
"Instead, give the NHS and local government the tools, and they can deliver the job."
Of course. They are in no way absolutely reamed by crippling workforce shortages. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/social-policy/health/the-health-and-social-care-workforce-gap/
It takes a certain special effort to publish anything that is quite this bad, poorly-evidenced and unreasoned.
