A Tale of Two Secretaries
Lest anyone think our new-ish Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, is turning out to be a bit confrontational, spare a thought for the people of America, as Robert Kennedy Junior is appointed their new Secretary of US Health and Human Services (HHS).
Following his announcements about shaking up the NHS with his Ten Year Plan, this week, Streeting chose the NHS Providers’ annual conference as a platform from which to issue further edicts. Hospitals would now be ranked in league tables to celebrate the best performers, and of course, to shame losers. He followed this up with a threat to fire failing NHS managers.
Streeting’s warm up act is Tony Blair’s former Health Secretary, Alan Milburn, who is now appointed as Streeting’s consigliere. Milburn’s contribution to the morale of the NHS workforce was to warn them they were drinking in the last chance saloon, and that the handouts would be drying up. The £22 billion bunged behind the bar from the recent budget would just have to suffice.
In his thoughtful editorial, Health Service Journal’s editor, Alistair McLellan suggests that Streeting’s bombast is a very convenient politician’s ruse as it ‘consumes attention and dominates media coverage – because we journalists love conflict.’
That would certainly fit the optics bit. The reality is that acting on the stated threats is, in practice, nigh on impossible. Firing managers isn’t easy, and not really a sustainable solution anyway. League tables for hospitals have been tried and only ended up with mass gaming.
So, in a week where it’s been reported that nurses are leaving the profession in record numbers, and pharmacists are following GPs in calling for affirmative action, picking fights with a demoralised NHS workforce might not be the way forward.
Still, Streeting and Milburns’ posturings are as nothing in comparison to the prospect of Robert Kennedy Jr being in charge of the free world’s health and wellbeing.
Quite apart from having neither medical nor governmental training, RKJ is a hardcore anti vaxxer and conspiracy theorist. The HHS department’s remit is vast, including the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Medicare, Medicaid and the National Institutes of Health.
RFK Jr has vowed to ‘restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again.’
Just the man for the job then.
Trump said that RKJ will do ‘some unbelievable things. Nobody’s going to be able to do it like you.’
On that I think we can all agree.
