Let's ask them to curb choice

doi:10.1136/bmj.39262.446192.3A

BMJ 2007;335:8 (7 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.39262.446192.3A

Letters

Tackling health inequality

Let's ask them to curb choice

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

We have seen some paradigm shifts in managing health inequalities¹in the past decade, which coincided with the Labour governmenttaking power in 1997. However, the recent publication of England'shealth profile still shows marked inequalities in health betweenthe north and south in England.² Despite the government's commitmentto public health, financial resources that were earmarked forChoosing Health initiatives went into balancing primary caretrusts' budgets. This is in parallel with unprecedented financialand political investments in the "choice" agenda despite evidencefrom a major national research programme funded by the Departmentof Health that it merely maintains the inequality divide anddoes nothing to address quality of health services and healthoutcomes.³ In fact, when it comes to "choice," less is more.⁴

It is about time that we challenged politicians on the shamefulwaste of recourses on initiatives of dubious value such as Chooseand Book and . . . [Full text of this article]

Richard Ma, general practitioner

Village Practice, London N7 7JJ

richard.ma@btinternet.com