NHS a campaign issue for June election

Abstract

Doctors who would dearly like to see politics thrown out of medicine are in for an uncomfortable time as politicians reso? lutely drag the National Health Service on to the political hustings. Even the Acheson report, now ripening into maturity in the Department of Health and Social Security, seems destined to be caught up in the rising election fever at West? minster, fever that will spread nationwide now that the election date of 9 June has been announced. The encouragement of inner city group practices rather than giving elderly general practitioners cash incentives to retire once and for all, thus making way for younger men, looks like being the government's way of resolving the dilemma presented by Professor E D Acheson's report. The money has been available for months, and Mr Kenneth Clarke, the health minister, has denied that there was any Treasury opposition to the DHSS getting the ?3m to spend in the next financial year on imple? menting Acheson's recommendations. He did not, however, deny the suggestion that the Treasury was unhappy about giving elderly general practitioners such payments because of the implications for other professions in which people work beyond normal retiring age. The DHSS, however, does not stand up the tale, but it could still be true. The suggestion was that elderly general practitioners in inner cities would have been offered something between ?10 000 and ?\2 000 as final settlement? give up and go gift. It now looks as if Mr Clarke, who insisted in the Commons committee considering the Health and Social Services Bill that the subject of Acheson was a maze and minefield, has decided to offer the money to doctors planning to set up group practices instead. That would not exclude elderly doctors who want to carry on working but would mean them doing so in the company of younger men. Just when this will be done is still anybody's guess. The minister said, however, that the govern? ment intended to announce the details as soon as possible. He also said that the Medical Practices Committee had made clear that it regarded new vocationally trained doctors of maturity and ability as suitable contenders for singlehanded inner city practices. The committee had also said that inexperience would not in future be bar to consideration. He had, he told MPs, taken the problem up with the Medical Practices Committee because at present young, inexperienced applicants could not get its approval to set up practice in London. The committee had announced as result that matters would not follow that pattern in future. The minister has not yet reached the stage at which he is able to make an announcement. Acheson, he told the committee, made no fewer than 115 recommendations and those addressed to the government were of complex and difficult nature. Now the June general election will overtake him, but package for the inner cities would be popular election offer. Certainly the future of the NHS is going to be campaign issue, and such package would be one means of countering Labour's remark? ably successful attack on the way the Conservatives have dealt with the NHS.