Editor’s blog Friday 6 August 2010: A few Friday thoughts

The Telegraph proves the old truism that fear sells; in this case, it's selling health insurance. Wowsa.

BBC Newslooks at an Indian hospital bringing Fordist principles to healthcare.

And where Health Policy Insightpoints out the obvious months ago, others eventually follow. There is more coverage in The Independent here.

The new report from the Rarer Cancers Foundation proposes that a secret deal should be reached with the pharma industry, capping total NHS spend on any treatment but allowing the industry to keep using the UK as a reference price market for the globe.

This sounds like a bad idea - firstly, because secrecy is never good in health policy; and secondly, because of the demonstrable issues around complexity noted over current NHS cost-sharing arrangements.

Not to mention Professor James Raferty's BMJ article's description of the longest-established risk-sharing project for MS / beta interferon as "a costly failure".