George Osborne looks likely to rebuff the increasingly desperate calls for more NHS cash when he gets up to deliver the Spending Review next Wednesday. There’s not even a guarantee that the promised £8bn (let alone the £30bn actually needed) will be forthcoming any time soon. The new chief NHS regulator said this week that the government's NHS 'efficiency plans' were "unachieveable, and frankly, bloody stupid".
Wouldn’t it be handy for Osborne if had in his back pocket a new NHS plan – one that the public had supposedly been consulted on – that suggests the NHS can sustain and indeed expand high quality care on his meagre cash offering? That it's fine to deliver it on the back of fewer, cheaper, more overworked doctors, with the gaps filled with unevidenced digital health tech and other Osborne Northern Powerhouse hobby horses?
Of course, this is a fantasy – and anyone who actually knows about the NHS would say so, given half a chance.
