In a time of political choices to give the NHS no more money, commissioning has become the Schrodinger's Cat of the NHS: simultaneously dead and alive.

Commissioning is basically two things: planning and reviewing the quantity and quality of services, and buying them (or not).

The planning and reviewing function is the alive bit. The buying ... you can work it out; you're smart people.

The dead hand of finance
Why is buying dead?

The Japanese aesthetic concept of wabi-sabi strikes me as a useful one for thinking about how the NHS is going to have to be to get through the oncoming mess.

Wabi-sabi works on the basis that
Nothing lasts,
Nothing is finished,
Nothing is perfect.

"The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist" - Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

This denial of an imminent NHS funding crisis, courtesy of health minister Dr Daniel 'Pecs Dance' Poulter, on top of The Buttle Of Britain's response to the Nuffield Trust's funding report, offers perhaps the clearest confirmation yet that we are near to an expl

Rumours swirl of a Cabinet reshuffle on Monday. Health Policy Insight has no great form in correctly calling the likely fate for health secretaries under this coalition’s reshuffles, and I’m sure you’re not holding your breath now.

’Keep smiling through, just like you always do …’

Stephen Dorrell's thoughtful speech to the Reform conference on integration today invites the policy sphere to think about the health and care continuum in a different way.

It follows on from the NHS England imperative for providers and commissioners to send in their longer-term plans over a two-year and five-year timescale.

If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans

Co-ordinated health and social care: What would it take to really make it happen?

FACTS AND FABLES IN HEALTH

“Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden”.

So said Phaedrus, the Thracian slave, who was freed by Augustus and was responsible for translating Aesop’s fables into Latin.

Not a bad place to start when trying to disentangle truth from fable in health policy.

Among the stupidest jokes of recent times is the former Treasury secretary Liam Byrne's note to his successor in 2010 after the general election. It read 'there's no money left'.

There are deeply, hog-whimperingly stupid things to do, and then there's something like this.

With apologies to Monty Python, a short Life Of Brian tribute.

EXTERIOR

SCENE: A LARGE CROWD HAS GATHERED TO HEAR FROM NHS ENGLAND CHIEF EXECUTIVE SIMON STEVENS, WHOM THEY HAVE MISTAKEN FOR THE MESSIAH.

THE CROWD ARE CHANTING HIS NAME IN UNISON (AND POSSIBLY OTHER TRADES UNIONS).

CROWD: Si-mon! Si-mon! Si-mon! Si-mon! (etc)

SIMON STEVENS: Good morning. I've got one or two things to say to you.

CROWD: Yes! Tell us both of them.

SIMON STEVENS: You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anyone.

CROWD: Yes! We don't need to follow anyone.

News versus not-news can be defined very simply: 'dog bites man' is not news; 'man bites dog' is news (or possibly a result of overstretched food banks).

So why is the finding of Tory squillionaire Lord Ashcroft's latest national opinion polling vaguely worthy of comment, I hear you ask?

We know the NHS is important, but ... this is going to be an economy general election, isn't it?