Is David Nicholson still gunning for Monitor?

No matter how bad your day is, Joe Simpson has had a worse one. The climber and inadvertent bestselling author gave a thoroughly moving and harrowing speech today to Confed. His recounting of the physical ordeal was harrowing just to hear.

Simpson niftily avoided the potential pitfalls of emotionalism, drawing instead a deeply touching and personal message that feeling totally alone and beyond contact or human touch is the worst kind of pain.

Andy Cowper, editor, Health Policy Insight
The Day Today: Wednesday 18 June 2008 - Day One NHS Confederation conference
And so to Manchester for the NHS Confederation conference, via Heathrow Terminal Five - not so much an airport, more a shopping opportunity. Blimey, what a decade you’ve just had if you love shopping. Now credit is crunchy and there’s a real risk of 70s-style stagflation, things look different.

Andy Cowper, editor, Health Policy Insight

Welcome to Health Policy Insight, a new online health policy information and analysis service.

New on the site today is Nick Timmins’ first HPI column, which considers the impact of ‘top-ups’ to NHS care. The Government is due to announce today or tomorrow that it will change policy. The level of detail to be announced, however, is uncertain.

The abstract principle of payment for healthcare was breached with prescription charges in the NHS’s earliest days. In the English NHS today, dentistry and audiology show us a residualist NHS service for much of the country, while access to physiotherapy and various mental health services in psychotherapy can be deeply patchy. And then there’s car parking charges …