Hate to say I told you so …

But we did; and also earlier here, too. Or indeed, originally here.

And I do – hate to say I told you so. No amount of short-term ‘feeling a bit clever for getting a judgment call right’ compensates for the stratospherically stupid policy decision that has very clearly been taken to do away with NICE.

Hats well and truly off to the Coalition government for their open publication of more data (and hat-tip to maverick nonpareil Paul Staines AKA Guido Fawkes of Order, Order for the reminder).

It allows us to know that PM David Cameron had the following meetings:

May 2010 Rupert Murdoch (News International) – general meeting

There is a short list in relation to the new NHS independent National Commissioning Board (NCB) - the Coalition Government's enormous new "light and lean" quango.

It is a short list because it only has three names on it.

It is not, of course, a shortlist. You cannot shortlist for a job that has not been advertised: that would be legally and procedurally wrong. (The NHS never does such things, of course.)

We thought they would go after NICE, but I did not think they would do it this quickly.

Lynne Taylor, a very good news journalist freelancing for Pharma Times, reports Earl Howe's comments to a joint Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry-Bio-Industry Association conference on Monday.

And in the end, the runes in the CSR about "up to £200 million" were smoke.

Health Secretary Andrew Liberatin' Lansley today announced that the National Cancer Drugs Fund will have £200 million annual budget for its first full year. It is guaranteed from April 2011 to the end of March 2014.

The DH press release also outlines a consultation among healthcare professionals, patients, carers and the public on these arrangements and other proposals for the Fund’s operation such as:
• ways to support patients and their clinicians in making the best treatment decisions;

Regular readers of Health Policy Insight are clever types, and will have picked up that we believe Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's plans for 'Liberating The NHS' involve significant downside risks, to put it mildly - involving as they do an enormous top-down structural reorganisation and boundless faith in the three Cs of choice, competition and commissioning to drive the new system.

The excellent Dr X has been in contact, to point out an interesting juxtaposition of quotes about how liberated GP commissioning consortia will be in practice.

NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson told the Commons Health Select Committee last week that GP consortia may be forced by the DH to share back-office functions. He said, "‘We haven’t made a decision on how much freedom GPs will have. We need to avoid every GP inventing their own back-office".

There is only one essential book about management: The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli. That exiled-from-court Renaissance Mandelson sought to curry his way back into favour with the reigning Lorenzo de Medici by dedicating to him a book on how a prince should run his principality.

Machiavelli distinguished between established, hereditary principalities; and those newly-conquered. He also differentiated between well-used cruelty and badly-used cruelty.

You will probably have seen the earlier post about HSJ"s story on the effective loss of NHS suprplus underspends.

We have two reactions to that story.

Nigel Edwards, acting chief executive, NHS Confederation
"We have sought and had reassurance from the Department Health that it will protect the surpluses NHS organisations have worked very hard to create. While we have been given this reassurance, if this later turned out not to be the case then this would send a very poor signal to the whole NHS.

Good afternoon to you, on a Friday of economic madness.

Health Service Journal's Sally Gainsbury has found out from the Nuffield Trust's chief economist that the NHS underspends in each financial year since 2007-8 are being removed by the Treasury.

The total in question is some £5.5 billion pounds.