Sixty years in hot pursuit of equity have left Britain a country as divided as ever between healthy haves and unhealthy have-nots.
Endless intellectual effort has been put into devising a formula that will allocate NHS resources in such a way as to eliminate such differences. They have failed.
Since 1997, inequalities of health have in some respects widened. Targets have been missed.
Alan Johnson’s response is to throw another £34million at the problem, and shift the deadline from 2008 to 2010.
Ministers’ latest wheeze is to inject more money to provide extra GP surgeries in areas that have fewer