title: Disagreement points to the uncertainties around the funding of health care irrespective of the devolved freedoms, and is a marker about the 'unjoined up' thinking in government.
abstract: he news columns of the nursing journals have been full of accounts of budgeting being shifted to ward sisters, of more money for nursing research, about the confusion on the implementation dates for the new pay structure, about the problems experienced by overworked lecturers, about efforts to recruit more nurses and the fact that more males than females are struck off the register. Nowhere have I spotted the health care story that has been dominating the broadsheets - the falling out between the prime minister and the chancellor about the funding of the NHS, and indeed the whole of health care.