Within 10 years, the farmers had organised healthcare allowances, purchased hospital equipment, improved roads, and established a clean water supplies for villagers.
That was what the Conservative government intended when it allowed family doctors to become fundholders which could purchase hospital treatments in the 1990s.
Already, the coalition government has announced controversial plans to hand over most of the NHS budget to consortia of family doctors that will purchase hospital care.
The original NHS plan paid only lip service to patient choice and competition—not surprisingly, since Labour had just devoted a lot of time to abolishing the Conservative reforms that had empowered GPs with real money and allowed them to purchase hospital care for their patients.Now the health department is playing midwife to the rebirth of a market within the NHS.
EVO-research money is intended to compensate for extra research expenditures; the usual hospital costs are paid by municipalities, which purchase hospital services for their inhabitants.
The municipalities will merge into fewer units, assume financing responsibilities for more health services than today and will purchase hospital services from the regions.
For whole populations, typically of about 500,000, PCTs purchased hospital, community health and some primary medical care services by contracting a mixture of providers, some private but still mostly NHS-owned.
A retired physician who made a fortune purchasing hospitals and running bingo and casino operations in the economically depressed California town of Hawaiian Gardens, Moskowitz is well-known to those who follow the Israel-Palestine conflict.
The town is correct in purchasing the hospital property, but it can't rush into a finite plan.
Primary-care trusts (PCTs), the 300 local organisations that purchase hospital treatments, could face a funding shortfall if hospitals do more work than budgeted for.
