The commercial determinants of health: The mini-budget is a consequence of foundational forces medicine must bear witness to

In the preface to his 1982 book “Capitalism and Freedom,” the influential economist and free-market proponent Milton Friedman wrote: “Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”1There is little doubt that the mini-budget announced last week represents a distillation of this philosophy. The changes are certainly real. Economic orthodoxy was thrown to the wind2 as the UK government embarked on a wide-ranging package of tax cuts at a time of exceptional pressure on public finances and great precarity for the most vulnerable people in the population. Political promises were similarly discarded as a party elected on a commitment to “levelling up” implemented measures that will benefit only…
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