Today it begins.

Today the NHS faces a fascinatingly undeveloped, electorally-unpromised and fundamental overhaul.

Today we start the legislative move from a system with hundreds of statutory commissioning organisations with accountable officers, working to national standards and regulation and offering patient choice to ... a system with hundreds of statutory commissioning organisations, working to national standards and regulation and offering patient choice.

Mmmm.

Politicians can do really good things, we should remember.

And one of the glories of a well-functioning Parliamentary select committee is that it can cut through the ordure-ordure of party-political partisan middle-aged shoutiness, and produce really useful reports on what is happening.

The full text of PM David Cameron's RSA speech on public services can be found here.

What follows below is the NHS-relevant sections, with some observations about the content in bold.

A major media offensive is under way to launch NHS Week (as the Downing Street 'media grid' has it.) This is the first step in the effort to tell the story of 'liberating the NHS'.

Policyland is a funny little bubble, and it is probably useful for us to remember that most people don't plough through vast policy documents. So for many people, the news of a vast, whole-scale, whole-system NHS reform throughout this week is going to be the first they have heard about it.

The Guardian's Denis Campbell has the story that shadow health secretary John Healey's effort to obtain the DH impact assessment for SOS Lansley's plan for 'Liberating The NHS' under Freedom Of Information legislation has been refused.

Of late, two 20th-century political figures have been much-quoted in regard to NHS reform.

Both men - Stalin and Mao - were highly-effective Communist dictators who also killed a lot of their own people.

Yes, I'm hoping there isn't a subtext too.

The NHS lines, Prime Minister’s Questions 12.1.11

Ed Miliband, Leader Of The Opposition: “His health minister (Paul Burstow MP. Lib Dem) said in his surgery, ‘I don’t want you to trust David Cameron – he has values I don’t share’.”

…

Irwin Brown of the Socialist Health Association wonders at a fragmented future for the NHS

When the previous Tory government came into power in 1979, they had a clear agenda about changes to public services and they had a hidden agenda that allowed them to weaken the likely centres of opposition to their plans.

They used their state power to reduce the power and role of the trade unions and local government, and they used a variety of means, including the break-up of the council estates, to weaken communities. The Labour opposition was poorly placed to oppose.

Professor Alan Maynard wishes you all a Happy New Year, but is basically a realist, and so doesn’t propose to push it. Here he investigates competition and whether it works in healthcare.

Successive governments have become enthusiastic proponents of competition in healthcare in the USA and the UK. The nice issue is whether there is proof that such enthusiasm for and development of competition can be evidenced as having reduced the costs of providing good-quality care patients.

The law is an intriguing thing; employment law even more so.

Long-time Health Policy Insight readers will remember that we covered John Watkinson’s original Employment Tribunal victory against his dismissal as CE by Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust in terms which NHS South West’s CE Sir Ian Carruthers’ colleagues didn’t much like.