Jeremy Hunt orders NHS England bosses to stick to waiting time limits

[Northerner]

Jeremy Hunt has ordered NHS England to stick to waiting time limits, putting him at loggerheads with its leaders who said hours earlier that insufficient funding from last week’s budget made this impossible.

NHS England told ministers on Thursday it would have to tear up guarantees on waiting times and deny patients new drugs next year because of the lack of money. But the health secretary rejected the proposals and signalled the start of months of difficult negotiations over what care the NHS can and cannot afford to provide in 2018-19.

“I would say very simply that the government is absolutely committed to NHS constitutional standards, that is why we found a significant increase for the NHS in the budget. Our absolute determination is to move back to hitting those standards,” Hunt told an audience of NHS chiefs hours after the plans emerged.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/30/nhs-bosses-waiting-time-targets-abandoned-next-year

The character 'King Canute' springs to mind - ordering the 'tide' of patients to stay away from the shore 🙄

 

[mikeyB]

So he orders it, and according to Mrs May, it will be Mr Stephens fault if it doesn’t work. Hunt continues to ignore shedloads of expert advice that there just isn’t the money to do it.

 

[Ally beetle]

Private finance initiative are slightly to blame to some part for this awful mess in NHS. Private companies making vast profits from the NHS. Pharmaceutical companies overcharging for drugs that are cheaper in every other part of the world, Drs doing work in the private sector for the NHS, private hospitals cherry picking easy cases so the NHS is left with the difficult cases to do. privatisation of the whole NHS is next and it will be the poor and lower middle incomes who will suffer the most

 

[Lucy Honeychurch]

Does he think he's Vladimir Putin? Issuing orders, he really is a dipstick!

 

[trophywench]

No he isn't a dipstick - he's just decided that Kim san Jung or whatever the tw*t's name is, is a good model to follow. (He rejected the Mugabe model cos he didn't want to massacre anyone, so had to find someone else.)

 

[mikeyB]

The money to help the NHS is available. The government found a billion down the back of the sofa to bribe the DUP to support them. And 3 billion in hand to alleviate the effects of Brexit. To say nothing of the 40 billion they are going to give Europe with nothing in return.

This country is being run by a small coterie of Brexiteers, not a government. The country (and the NHS) can go to hell in a handcart just as long as we exit Europe.

 

[ypauly]

He didn't order anything, simply rejected a proposal

 

[mikeyB]

So which bit of “Jeremy Hunt orders NHS bosses...” doesn’t represent an order? Whether or not there were alternatives presented, no heed was taken and the order made. Typical of the man.