New doctors' leader calls for insurance scheme to fund NHS

The new president of the British Medical Association has called for his profession and the Government to put aside 50 years of opposition and consider "Continental-style" social insurance to fund the health service.

Sir Anthony Grabham used his inaugural speech yesterday to cast doubt on whether Labour's pledge to increase health spending by £40bn a year would ever become a reality. Even if it did, the money might not be enough to reverse decades of chronic underspending, he said, adding that Britain should consider a health system funded by social insurance rather than taxation. The BMA has traditionally supported a tax-based NHS providing free care at the point of entry.

Sir Anthony, a retired surgeon, said: "There is much that is very good in the NHS, but I fear that there is now so much that is so bad and so persistent that one can no longer allow the good to continue to obscure the frankly bad."

While he was delighted by the Chancellor's Budget statement, he said it was wrong to rely on what were essentially political promises over a timetable that included the next election. "I have to confess that I remain somewhat sceptical about the value of these promises – we'll have to see and I still suspect that a different model of healthcare provision will have to be looked at some time in the future."

Sir Anthony said it was unacceptable for such a rich country to keep a million patients waiting weeks or months for treatment. He said increasing demands meant that one third of patients received care of the "highest quality", one third of NHS medicine was "reasonably good", but the last third was cause for "very great concern".