Dr Teck Khong is a Leicester GP and a forensic physician for Northamptonshire Police who contested Bradford North at the 2005 General Election. He is on the Conservative Party's approved list of parliamentary candidates.
Proposals for health policy changes are conventionally driven by budgetary considerations. This approach to financing the nation’s healthcare is complicated by a second major handicap of government management – adherence to certain anachronistic aspects of the NHS.
By a combination of nannying, removing the financial freedom of choice and perpetuating the grip on procurement and provision of healthcare services, successive governments have stifled the development of a genuine and an ethical market economy in health. This latter objective is mismanaged on the one hand by haphazard privatisation and on the other by disengagement with the professionals who are the mainstay of the NHS.
To stop the present inexorable descent into chaos, our health system should be revived in line with plans for major overhauls in other aspects of the national infrastructure – the pledge to small administration, the inculcation of individual responsibility and the support of personal choice.
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