Oh. For. Fuck’s. Sake.

I have just wasted half an hour of my life that I’m never going to get back again, watching the BBC Panorama programme on drug access and NICE.

Now 30 minutes is far too short a time to even attempt a serious programme about healthcare rationing if you’re clever and thoughtful (even though the BBC evidently believe that the attention deficit disorder generation, weaned on Ritalin and fast edits, can bear no more), so a serious programme is what we didn’t get.

It is sometimes said that what happens in the US comes to Britain a few years later. It is not so often commented, however, that the US is beginning to pick up some things from the British system.

While blogging last night (www.healthpolicyinsight.com/?q=node/149), I didn't yet know that NICE chair Professor Sir Michael Rawlins would be writing a piece for the Health Service Journal website (www.hsj.co.uk) today, and merely went from what was in The Observer's interview / feature. Nor had I then seen NICE chief executive Andrew Dillon's comments to BBC's Panorama, trailled in today's Independent (www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-wellbeing/health-news/medici...).

Hello again, after another unwanted and unexpected workload-enforced interregnum of absence. What a lot of medals Team GB have got. It's great! There may be hope for the obesity crisis yet if this turns sport and exercise back to something we as a nation do rather than something we just watch (with all the associated pornographic connotations).

The US healthcare system is fragmented and expensive, costing twice as much per capita as the NHS and consuming nearly 16 per cent of a much larger national income.

If you are elderly or disabled, you can get a reasonable package of healthcare benefits from Medicare, which is federally funded. If you have fought for US armed forces, you are eligible for benefits from the Veterans Administration which is also federally funded and an efficient mini-NHS.

A glance at today’s press confirms the tagline currently used by the Economist – ‘we live in economic times’.

An inherent tension in healthcare has re-emerged in a contemporary theme. It relates to the balance between population-level and individual-level perspectives on policymaking.

Tom Smith on three health policy stories today, all adding to a sense of increasing financial pressure.

If the weather isn’t hot this summer, the politics certainly are - with the forecast for it to get warmer yet.

The curse of the TLA (three-letter acronym) is a heavy shadow hanging over the wonderful world of the NHS. In particular, dual definitions can be fun.