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Press Release
3 July 2025
Economics
Healthcare
Commenting on the Government’s plan for the NHS announced today, Dr Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director at the free market think thank the Institute of Economic Affairs, said:
“If you take the Government’s bombastic rhetoric about how their ’10 Year Health Plan for England’ will completely turn our healthcare system around at face value, you will be disappointed with what is actually in there. It is mostly a reaffirmation of long-running policy goals, such as shifting care out of hospital and into a community setting, promoting the take-up of new technologies, improving patient choice, and aligning financial incentives to reward better outcomes. These are things that their predecessors and their predecessors’ predecessors would also have said.
“But if you ignore the political rhetoric for a moment, there is much to be liked about this plan. The policy goals may not be new, but there is nothing wrong with reaffirming them every now and then.
“The most promising part of the paper is the plan to add a new range of functions to the NHS App, a tool which has thus far been underused. In the future, patients will be able to use the app as both a navigation tool, and as a database for information about the quality of different health services and healthcare providers. This would be an extension of the Blair-era reforms, which could meaningfully enhance patient choice, and improve outcomes in that way.
“The worst part of the document is the section on prevention, a word which always sounds good, but which, in practice, mostly means government officials meddling with what we eat and drink, when they should really just leave us alone and mind their own business.”
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