The Guardian view on the NHS: 100 days of revision and retreat | Editorial
David Cameron likes to boast that not a day has been wasted since his unexpected triumph 100 days ago. That may be the case. But it's also true that ministers are scampering around like jugglers keeping improbable numbers of plates balanced at the same time. In several departments, most of all at health, it is looking increasingly likely that even as agile a minister as Jeremy Hunt will be unable to avoid an almighty crash very soon.
Last month, Mr Hunt went to the King's Fund, the impartial and long-established health policy thinktank, to set out his plans for the next five years. Mr Hunt is already unusual, a member of a small band of health secretaries (headed by the NHS's founder Aneurin Bevan) who's stayed in his job, one of the toughest in cabinet, after an election. But on Monday the King's Fund is publishing its assessment of progress since May, and its conclusion is that he may be in office, but increasingly it is the Treasury that is in power. This marks the denouement of the ambition of Mr Cameron's first health secretary, Andrew Lansley, to devolve power away from Whitehall. For all trusts, even the supposedly independent foundation trusts, and increasingly for patients facing lengthening waits, the result is already serious, and likely to get worse.
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