So. Does this story about the Conservatives wanting NICE to approve more cancer drugs look to you as if this is a party who can credibly propose in their policy to allow an independent board to run the NHS?

No?

Me neither.

This Grauniad spoof for April Fool's Day raised a wry smile at the end of a very long day.

Off to bed now. Night-night.

Hi. No time at all to write summat proper today, but the significant newsflash is that it seems like it might be all over bar the legal shouting for NHS Connecting For Health.

The true state of things is unclear, as this tweet from E Health Inside shows.

But it doesn't look good.

Commissioning has worked so brilliantly that the top management of the DH couldn’t even tell you what it costs.

Yes, really. Or if they could, they certainly didn’t tell the Health Select Committee. It is the sort of question you just might be able to anticipate, no?

The Committee has just issued its report into commissioning.

How do? Good weekend, I hope?

So. What did you make of the Ask The Chancellor ting on Channel 4?

What a quiet room it was: you could hear presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy turn pages of his notes. The audience was certainly thoroughly focused on the contenders.

Let’s dance! They System Management honchos at the dear old Department fo Health have finally issued the Principles and rules for co-operation and competition.

Nice timing, straight after the budget. Every clothwit will be ‘analysing’ wot the Budget means (fictional efficiency savings, basically).

Let’s dance! They System Management honchos at the dear old Department fo Health have finally issued the Principles and rules for co-operation and competition.

Nice timing, straight after the budget. Every clothwit will be ‘analysing’ wot the Budget means (fictional efficiency savings, basically).

You could not make this shit up - truly.

The Magical Money Tree Where Cash Grows For Free has evidently been grafted onto the Japanese Knotweed Bullshit Plant to produce this exciting new hybrid.

Biology trumps economics every time.

(Sigh) OK. Here we go.

These entirely fictional saving of £4.35 billion will not be achieved by the NHS and the DH. They will not be made through the following brilliant and failsafe schemes:

Morning (as in afternoon). You'll have seen the latest Maynard Doctrine on boomerang health policy. If not, do so now and then come back here.

Oo-kay. So nothing from darling Chancellor Darling about the efficiency savings (indeed, they’ll be funding free social care, so long as you don’t actually need any).

And Cameron’s response was basically ‘vote Conservative’. Hey-ho.

Professor Alan Maynard OBE admires the Buddhist nature of NHS reform. The wheel turns and civilisations rise; the wheel turns, and civilisations fall …

Health policymakers continue to rediscover ancient and well-researched problems, and to repeat the redisorganisational mistakes of yesteryear.

In part, this is due to a failure to distinguish between organisational structures; processes of care (or outputs); and patient outcomes - i.e. the rather important question, ‘did we make the patient better’?