NHS
The internal logic of the NHS makes it ruthlessly cold-hearted
Gordon Brown, echoing Aneurin Bevan, says that the greatest gift that the NHS brings to people is ‘serenity’. He is…
How does anyone manage to navigate the maze of our second-rate NHS?
Next month the National Health Service turns 70. The institution is greatly loved, and not for nothing. The fear of…
Letters: An extra 3 per cent won’t fix the NHS
What the NHS needs Sir: James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson are right (‘The great Tory health splurge,’ 26 May): an…
£350 million for the NHS: How the Brexit bus pledge is coming true
A fortnight before Philip Hammond delivered his last Budget, the chief executive of the NHS gave a speech making the…
Sorry fishermen, but we were never going to win back control of our waters
My decision to vote Remain was driven in part by an exercise in which I tried to identify anyone close…
Revealed: the Tory health tax bombshell
The single most important domestic policy decision that the Conservatives must take is what to do about public spending. After…
The all give and no take of US taxes
Last week, the New York Times ran a very un-New-York-Times-y article, ‘Resentment Grows Over Who Gets Health Care Aid’. It…
The NHS’s internal market is an expensive catastrophe
The NHS is in dire straits. I never thought I’d say this but as a doctor, and having seen the…
Letters: Leave Theresa May alone – she’s doing her best
Stop knocking May Sir: I find this knocking of Theresa May increasingly depressing (‘Theresa’s choice’, 3 February). She has a terrible job…
From a war-zone A&E to hellhole wards, my dispiriting week in an NHS hospital
I am in a good position to report from the NHS frontline, having been in hospital with pneumonia for just…
Outsourcing is a good thing, regardless of the Carillion crash
Carillion is a disaster on all fronts, but my sympathies go first to the fallen contracting giant’s sub–contractors. Upwards of…
A nice, cuddly NHS would be bad for us
Recently the NHS postponed a large number of non-urgent operations to cope with what is known as the ‘annual winter…
Patients like being told they need an operation. It doesn’t mean they do
In George Bernard Shaw’s play The Doctor’s Dilemma, written early last century, the knife-happy surgeon invents a nut-shaped abdominal organ,…
We all suffer ‘old age’ ailments – that doesn’t mean we all need a scan
Memory, neuroscientists tell us, is fallible. It is a dynamic process whereby each time we remember something, it will be…
Health and personal choice
Public health specialist Sir Michael Marmot has blamed ‘the cuts’ for the rise in dementia among the elderly, resulting in…
Counting on sheep
Going Forward (BBC4, Thursdays) is a BBC comedy about the continuing adventures of Kim Wilde, the fat, cynical but lovable…
Long life
When your mind suddenly goes wonky, you may be the one person who doesn’t realise that there is something wrong…
In praise of doctors’ handwriting
My baby and I excel at blood tests. He (tiny, jaundiced) stretches out naked under the hospital’s hot cot-lamps like…
Polly’s pleb adventure
Down and Out in Paris and London is a brilliant specimen from a disreputable branch of writing: the chav safari,…
Stress point
It’s not work that’s killing us. It’s the irritation and confusion of modern office life
Diary
It’s clear that Vladimir Putin has had a facelift, which might explain why Wendi Deng would take an interest in…
The scan said my baby wouldn’t live. It was wrong
When my unborn baby was a five-month-old fetus, twisting about in the internal dark, he was given a death sentence…
What was this bed-blocker doing on my ward?
There’s some journalistic research you’d really never do by choice. Spending four days in an NHS hospital with a life-threatening…
Flying doctors
A few months ago, paramedics were on the brink of industrial action. They had legitimate grievances. Ambulance services were being…
Death on the NHS
Ten years ago, the National Health Service eased my father’s final days. My mother, this year, was not so lucky
