The end of the National Health Service?

摘要

Your recent Editorial "The end of our National Health Service" (Jan 29, p 353) claims that our plans to modernise and strengthen the National Health Service (NHS) will lead to its catastrophic breakup. This is completely untrue and is pure scaremongering. It is absurdto suggestthatthe NHS will no longer be a national service. We have always been clear that care will continue to be free at the point of use, based on clinical need and not the ability to pay. The new NHS Commissioning Board will reinforce national consistency, by commissioning a significant proportion of services directly itself, and by setting consistent, clinically evidenced commissioning guidelines.