BMJ  2006;332 (8 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7545.0-f

Editor's choice

Trust and demand

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

Last week's Editor's Choice argued that health care was too important to be left to politicians and that Britain's National Health Service should be made independent of government. This week 900 British doctors have written to politicians to argue that the NHS is unsustainable and that it is time to look at new ways of delivering health care in the UK (p 813). What prompts this demand for new thinking is the service's financial crisis, which is seeing pay awards staged and jobs cut (p 813). Yet I wonder how apparent the crisis is to patients: several recent exposures to the NHS, through friends and family in different parts of the country, have shown exemplary service.

Nevertheless, the sense of crisis and of unstoppable demand persists. Doctors for Reform argue that the NHS is simply too monolithic, and that a mixed economy might better manage demand, . . . [Full text of this article]

Jane Smith, deputy editor

(jsmith@bmj.com)


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