Tom Smith, associate director of Health Policy Insight and chief executive of the British Society for Gastroenterology, discusses the impact of whatever election result ensues.

What will the election result mean for the NHS in the next few weeks?
Every year, starting at the end of November I start talking about things I am going to next year. Paradoxically as I move forward into December and the Christmas distractions next year seems even further away . I promise to do lots of things next year when everything will be different.

Good evening. Slight pause in posting: I have been off, saving the world.

(OK, that is not strictly true, I have been off working for clients.)

In the meantime, the redoubtable but undoubted Professor Alan Maynard has provided you with a quick new pre-electoral dose of Maynard Doctrine here.

How to vote
Do you need me - or anyone - to know how you should vote tomorrow? I cannot and do not believe that HPI readers are so empty-headed as to want some hack telling them for whom they should vote.

Professor Alan Maynard OBE emphasises the high value of avoiding business as usual after the election.

Business as usual involves the following thought processes amongst politicians and their admirable civil servants

Step One “We must do something”

Step Two “This is something”

Step Three “Therefore we must do this”

(The Politicians’ Syllogism, Yes Minister, volume 2 [1987])

Within the week, there may be a new Secretary of State for Health. Like all secretaries, the purpose of their work is to keep secrets.

Hurrah! Andy Burnham has promised that the Whittingdon won't lose its A&E and maternity.

This means all three parties are now committed to keeping the Whittingdon fully open as it is now.

Here's a little game to celebrate.

From BBC News comes the re-announcement by the Conservatives (can't find any other reference) that they will give £200 million to a cancer fund to pay for drugs that expert rationing body NICE thinks do not work sufficiently to be cost-effective - even following the liberalisation of NICE definitions of what expensive end-of-life drugs should be used, mandated by the Richards Review.

The Academy of Royal Medical Colleges today suggests that cuts could be good for patient care. In a well-timed intervention, this consortium of the Great And Good swing their considerable weight behind rationalisation of NHS services.

Oh dear. Oh dear.

On what is already a dreadful day for Labour, with PM Gordon Brown calling a difficult voter “bigoted”, things got little better for The People's Party when Andy Burnham seriously misled the BBC2 Daily Politics health hustings.

You can find very roughly transcribed notes of the event (which was fairly good, overall) below.

In this Guardian feature by David Hare on the theatrics of Cleggmania, an interesting point is raised about the possible future of a more mutually-provided NHS.

Nobody has summarised the Daily Mail better than The Daily Mash website.

Michael Rawlins’ elegant recent rejoinder to a magnificent and 70+% wrong Mail story deserved mention.

But the Mail has excelled itself with this world-class piece of bullshit.

Professor Alan Maynard OBE warns that faith in mutuals as commissioners is not supported by any actual evidence

The rule of thirds
Since 1997, we have had the Blairite rhetoric of the ‘Third Way’ (based partly on Etzioni), as refocused recently on the use of the ‘third sector’ of charitable and non-profit-making organisations as an alternative to NHS and commercial provision of health care.