Published 19 November 2008, doi:10.1136/bmj.a2619
Cite this as: BMJ 2008;337:a2619

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Lay your money down

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

I was born in Essex. But I have spent my life in Scotland, a place where sometimes it’s not easy being English. I still have an English accent and a pathological urge to say "please" and "thank you." But this is a mere veneer, for I have gone native—my heart is tartan. I am the Hollywood stereotype, a heathen, war painted, kilted transvestite, stubbornly holding my ground no matter what, and am therefore direct and blunt. If this upsets people, so be it. So when the BMA and academics hail the benefits of the clinical elements of the quality and outcomes framework (QOF), I say I do not believe them.

In a Celtic sceptical tradition, I voted against the new contract, believing that it would jeopardise the care of patients. For long ago I lost faith in fables of medical economists’ cost benefit analysis, a science so riddled with confounding . . . [Full text of this article]

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