BMJ  2006;332:1096 (6 May), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7549.1096-c

Letter

Money for nothing, and your kicks for free

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

EDITOR—You know you've upset the profession when a local colleague stops you in the car park to say you've got it wrong. I merely suggested on a Scottish news programme that the general practitioners' pay rise was excessive and divisive.

We have seen record spending on health care—to catch up for years of the NHS underfunding.¹ We were the backward medical child of Europe, with our French, German, and Italian cousins enjoying much better health care. This of course was a complete false premise—merely doing more operations, having more specialists, and taking more medicines should not be confused with quality—but that's politics. More spending indeed runs the very real risk of overdiagnosis and unnecessary interventions. The NHS had for decades made the best of its lot—poverty giving it clarity and priority. We were well paid, with a generous pension, and we worked hard. Grumbling was a popular and . . . [Full text of this article]

Glasgow G20 9DR destwo@yahoo.co.uk

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