Tony Blair said that the fundamental reform of NHS funding and structure would come to an end by 2008. By then the Prime Minister said that the health services would offer the patients with an 18-week gap between a patient seeing a doctor and going in for an operation. It is the first time that the health service has come up with an answer for the NHS to continue its work. The Doctors for Reform is a committee where there are 900 medics who struggle for the welfare of the doctors. Britain would be spending more than France, for health funding. For historical and ideological reasons, the NHS remains almost unique as a state monopoly provider of public health care paid for entirely from taxes.
The Chancellor, Gordon Brown, said that the best way to improve the NHS was to pump billions of taxpayers' money into a largely unreformed system. But the Doctors for Reform group said that the extra resources have not created a service by the NHS of the standard of the other European competitors. It said that the situation is deteriorating and not improving. It added that a mixed funding system with other sources of finance, equitably raised, would allow gaps in today's NHS service to be filled and a modern, truly comprehensive service to emerge.It is a hybrid approach to harness the strengths of public and private sectors and break down the barriers between them. Supporters of social health insurance schemes argue that the government should allow the people to decide how much of their own money to spend on health care and for those who have no money, there are subsidies. At present the two-tier health system allows the wealthy people to use their money to opt out from public provision. Prof Karol Sikora, a cancer specialist, said that the present system is heavy on bureaucracy and poor on delivery. It is doomed to fail, because with a single monolithic employer it cannot adapt to either technical or societal change.
Prof Aidan Halligan, who until last September was the deputy chief medical officer, told the British Journal of Health Care Management that to see a true reform in the health care system one has to change the working patterns, practice and custom. The problem with the NHS is that it is suffering a leadership void which has caused it to lose its way. The service has a huge gap between the highly motivated front-line staff and the systemic dysfunctionality in which they operate.
