Hello. I’ve been away finishing up a stint editing a journal about continence. Insert your own joke here.

I’m also just getting over a quick bout of something-or-other, so this will be very concise.

HPI associate director Tom Smith has written a useful piece on the Obama speech to Congress on healthcare reform. Contrary to many pundits' predictions, the US President wants the public plan option to be left in the bill. The maths on the voting for this bill are going to be extremely tight indeed.

HPI associate director Tom Smith puts the Obama healthcare speech into its political and social context

Last night, US President Barack Obama delivered his most political speech since taking office. Despite positioning himself between left and right, blue and red, his prose was less purple than usual and much more political.

Professor Alan Maynard OBE suggests a taxing approach to the health problems caused by alcohol and sugary foods. Minimum pricing per unit of alcohol and new taxes on highly-fattening processed foods could help change habits and raise revenues.

This time next year, the Conservatives will be in power and the NHS will be facing significant reductions in resourcing.

Typically, such parsimony is accompanied by Ministers lauding the merits of health promotion and non-NHS investments which affect health.

I once chaired a conference at which Claire Rayner spoke about patient dignity. She's a lovely woman, and a bit of a national treasure, so it pains me to point out that her article on the Guardian website following up yesterday's Patients' Association report (of which she is President) is a bit silly.

From the silly season’s decline and fall, we are warming up to the party conference season. On Tuesday, The Indpenedent’s Andrew Grice revealed that Gordon Brown has now accepted that public spending will have to be cut: an announcement of some kind of review should probably be expected for the leader’s speech.

The new report from the Patients Association, Patients, not numbers … people, not statistics has cornered the headlines today. Cataloguing 16 incidents of appalling patient care reported to them (only one of which is anonymised), the report focuses repeatedly on incidents of bad basic nursing and ancillary care.

Perspective was one of the great additions in fine art painting. It involved the creation of the horizon line, which is often implicit. Where parallel lines are involved in a depiction, then one or more vanishing points are involved.

Why am I writing about perspective? Due partly the reflection from returning from a good holiday. One thing that a good holiday can provide is enough of a break from routine to give you a sense of perspective.

Hello. Hope you're well.

Holiday ends today, and to mark the bitter-sweet prospect of a return to the coalface, please find the latest instalment of The Maynard Doctrine, in which the good Professor looks at what the US could learn from UK efforts at healthcare reform.

See you tomorrow.

Professor Alan Maynard OBE looks at the progress and pitfalls of healthcare reform in the USA

Winston Churchill is alleged to have said that Americans will try everything and eventually they get it right! Will this be the case with Obama’s hopes for health care reform?

Good evening. This is another dispatch from abroad. We are away to celebrate my birthday, so there will be intermittent bits and pieces, but less for the next ten days or so. I know you’ll cope.

Localising NHS IT: the Tory solution to the CFH dilemma
The Conservative Party’s independent review of the NHS IT programme is out, and what in interesting document it is.