WHAT is it about health provision - and in particular dental care - that governments find so hard to get their heads around? And why is it that there seems to be such a lack of common-sensical, joined-up thinking when it comes to funding these services?

Already we have seen where a massive increase in UK health spending is leading: cuts in nursing staff - because their salaries weren't factored adequately into the equation and the system wasn't reformed prior to having billions of pounds thrown at it.

The same collective paralysis in thinking seems to have afflicted the Welsh Assembly Government's well-meaning but deeply flawed attempts to rescuscitate what little remains of NHS dental services in Wales.

For reasons which may make sense to bureaucrats but no-one else, an absurdly-tight funding deadline for Assembly cash means already cash-strapped health boards will have to find what amount to huge bridging loans if new dental practices are to go ahead.

The result of this is that further much-needed dental services will not be developed and existing health services elsewhere may face even more cutbacks.

It is not the Local Health Boards (LHBs) who are to blame - in fact we have nothing but praise for their keeping faith with the dental practices and their forbearance with the Assembly's apparent lack of understanding of the business issues involved.

The LHBs were placed in an impossible position in being expected to negotiate with practices without knowing what money, if any, they could be guaranteed to receive. In their turn the practices were expected to commit to providing services without any guarantee they would be paid.

No-one works like this in business, yet the Assembly Government expected them to do so and ensured failure by trying to bounce the parties into agreement by setting an impossible deadline.

Now, making a crisis out of their own self-imposed drama, there is to be some "emergency" funding made available over which the four North Wales LHBs must fight like crows around a dead mouse.

The state of dental care in North Wales is better than it was (and indeed it could get no worse), but for the money we're spending it could be so much better. Come on you guys - it really is NOT rocket science.