Thursday 29 April 2010
More election stuff - Labour
As promised a further update. Good to see the 3 prospective candidates for health minister slugging it out on the BBC politics show yesterday. Labour have made promises of free health checks for everyone aged 40-74 and the right to see a GP at weekends/evenings. The promises are light on detail - in fact most practices offer health checks to their patients already, and people can already see 'a GP' 24/7 by using the out-of-hours service. This goes along the same lines as the recent guarantee that patients with suspected cancer will be seen by a specialist within two weeks (this has been the case for several years already). Labour do seem committed to improve and expand cancer care services to enable more palliative care at home- this policy would be much welcomed in the Dales, as nursing/carer support is often difficult to guarantee in rural areas. Labour will also scale down the doomed NHS IT project (which it invented), and re-invest the money in frontline services. There is no mention in the manifesto about abolishing car park charges at hospital (a pledge last year at the party conference).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
These 'promises' seem sensible although whether the party will be in power with money available to implement them is another matter. I think many who work full-time would like to be able to see a real, live GP at weekends, or at least on Saturday, rather than use say NHS Direct (which I have found very good by the way). I'm sure that more palliative care at home would be welcomed by many. Charging for hospital car-parking is an out-rage; it is a regressive indirect tax which should be abolished.
ReplyDelete