Gold for the NHS

doi:10.1136/bmj.325.7355.101

BMJ 2002;325:101 ( 13 July )

Letters

Gold for the NHS

No natural limitation exists on demand for services free at point of supply

What exactly is being bought with this gold?

No natural limitation exists on demand for services free at point of supply

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR $---$ By far the most encouraging sentence in Robinson's editorial is the last: "There is a strong case for arguing that. . . UK healthcare policy should be driven by the supply siderather than the demand side reform."¹ Yet there is not a wordof this from the chancellor or the secretary of state or in thereport by Wanless, whose terms of reference guaranteed his conclusions.Even working within those limitations Wanless managed to generatesome gratuitous drive, saying that the cost of health care islikely to fall as we take greater measures to improve ourhealth.

There may have been some excuse for Aneurin Bevan's assessment of budgetary realities, but surely 54 years' unvarying experiencehas been enough to convince us of the truth of another healthsecretary's assessment (Enoch Powell's): there is no natural limitationon the demand for any good or service free at the point . . . [Full text of this article]