Taking the pith out of the Health & Social Care Bill - “Integrate my chutzpah”: Andrew ‘Not Looking For A Fight’ Lansley

Wow. That was insane.

Really, properly insane. Insane for grown-ups. That, ladies and gentlemen, was Insane 2.0.

The hog-whimperingly reality-free nature of the goings-on of recent weeks slightly defy belief - let alone summary and analysis.

However. It’s time to catch up on the funniest show in town. Fill your glass with something warming; down it in one; refill; repeat. Deep breath. OK. Here we go.

The year arrived to the strains of a report on the need for integrated care from the Kings Fund and Nuffield Trust think-tanks. It’s an important theme, although also one that can easily founder without a good definition of integrated care: the Walter Leutz integration rules remain very useful ones.

Integration also cropped up this week, in the Health Select Committee’s latest report on The Nicholson Challenge, AKA public expenditure. In the leak-furore media coverage of the report, the actual radicalism of it was missed almost completely: it stated, “the Committee believes that, as a matter of urgency, the Department of Health should investigate the practicalities of greater passporting of NHS funding to social care".

That means going right up to the hardcore-toxic area of means-tested-meets-universal. Whoo-eee. That is big stuff; the more so given Health Minister For Anonymity Paul Burstow’s evidence session with the same committee ...

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