Change Comes to the National Health Service

The Telegraph headlines: “Biggest revolution in the NHS for 60 years.” What’s the change? Britain’s doctors are being put in charge of patient care. After 60 years of socialized medicine, this qualifies as a brilliant insight:

Doctors are to be given sole responsibility for overseeing front-line care to patients under Coalition plans described as the biggest revolution in the NHS since its foundation 60 years ago.
About £80billion will be distributed to family GPs in a move that will see strategic health authorities and primary care trusts scrapped.
The plan, contained in a white paper to be published next week, is designed to place key decisions about how patients are cared for in the hands of doctors who know them. Tens of thousands of administrative jobs in the health service will be lost as a result.

After 60 years, the English have figured out that health care decisions should be made by patients and their doctors. One is tempted to say, “No kidding, Sherlock,” but the fact that this constitutes revolutionary change is more evidence of the stultifying effect of government-controlled medicine.

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