A new research study into viability-challenged NHS hospitals by MHP Health Mandate policy and communications agency offers a political 'heat map', by correlating these trusts with marginal constituencies.

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At one point, it looked as if Labour's shadow health secretary John Healey might forego his speech for a panel session. Labour had pulled off the coup of getting former coronary and stroke czar Professor Sir Roger Boyle onto a mixed panel of NHS staff.

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Click here for details of 'PFI in the sky; not NPfIT for purpose - DH magics up money without menaces', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

The NHS is traditionally bad at failure.

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Click here for details of 'PFI in the sky; not NPfIT for purpose - DH magics up money without menaces', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.

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Much of Labour leader Ed Miliband's argument yesterday wasn't at all bad. He has clearly grasped the extent to which the financial crisis has changed UK politics and economics.

And he is positioning himself to appeal with arguments about fairness to a 'squeezed middle' which is certain to grow in size.

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We have previously written about Lord Ashcroft’s electoral polling on marginal seats, and the role of the NHS for voters.

Today, on the Conservative Home website, Lord Ashcroft outlines his latest psephological research.

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The new double-issue, '‘PFI in the sky; not NPfIT for purpose - DH magics up money without menaces', is now out.

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Oops.

The political strategy to attack 22 trusts' PFI debt burden adopted by Andrew Lansley (saviour, liberator) and colleagues, and excitedly taken up by the BBC and Daily Telegraph yesterday, rather backfired.

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If you were a cynical person, which of course I am not, you might think that today's plethora of media stories about the unaffordability of PFI was a prelude to some kind of announcement about what the Government (which is continuing to support such schemes) intends to do about the affordability issue.

Another psalter is inscribed in The Book Of Things That Are Not Surprising, with the news that BMA Council has today given its full backing to its chair Dr Hamish Meldrum.

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The good news for the Lib Dems is that they are now a party of government. You might not think it, if you've followed the coverage of their party conference this week as regards their health policy.

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Click here for details of 'Comrade Sir David Nicholson - the wheelbarrow man or the liberator-in-waiting?', the new issue of subscription-based Health Policy Intelligence.