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Editor's blog Sunday 4 April 2010: Conservatives fire starting gun on electoral auction of NHS promises

Hello, and Happy Easter.

It was interesting to read the Telegraph story that David Cameron has discovered The Magical Money Tree Where Cash Grows For Free.

No, not really. But after Labour's obfuscation on how they would pay for the National Care Service, the Conservatives have fired the starting gun on the electoral auction of promises for health, with his decision to abolish NICE. And fund any drug a doctor wants to prescribe.

The funding will of course not really come from The Magical Money Tree Where Cash Grows For Free.  That would be silly.

No, it will -  according to Laura Donnelly's report - be funded by "the £200 million which the NHS stands to save from the Conservatives' decision not to go ahead with Labour's planned 1 per cent rise in National Insurance".

He hasn't said he will abolish NICE, of course. No, that would be A Big Decision, of the kind for which we are going to have to wait until the next government is formed.

But you might wonder what NICE is going to do if it is no longer trusted to decide which treatments are sufficiently effective financially and clinically for the NHS as a national service to fund ...

Which is what this announcement quite clearly tells us.