“Conservative’s helping their friends” on the NHS is quite a powerful message (because it is literally true). However, Labour have been a bit muted on this because (a) the Last Labour government’s involvement in privatisation and , er , helping their friends (Milburn, Hewitt etc) and (b) Labour are still committed to a bit of privatisation, just less of it.

There is a way around it. Labour need to stop being committed to (b) and find a way of dealing with (a). The very best way would be to disown Hewitt et al. A simpler way might be to say “The last Labour did mostly good things for the NHS, like getting health spending on a fairer level. Some of the things they did were less good, like bringing in private health firms. The Tories are dropping the last Labour’s government’s successes, but taking up their failures”

How exactly does that report support those who are anti-reform? In that poll people support healthcare along localist ideals, support changing the way in which the NHS spends its budget, supports GP commissioning and support competition.

Those two particular polls about the Tories image simply proves that the only opposition to the reform is paranoid conspiracy theorists on the left.

Will “Those two particular polls about the Tories image simply proves that the only opposition to the reform is paranoid conspiracy theorists on the left.”

Yeah. Like those crazy conspiracy theorists in the BMA. the RCN and UNISON. Thank god they’re just tiny unimportant fringe groups and not in any way involved in running the NHS.

There is little or no debate it would seem on the organisation and purpose of veterinary practice in England. The industry is not dominated by paperwork or middle managers. Business speak is pretty much non existent. And we do not appear to have an obvious crisis in health care provisioning for cats and dogs. I wonder why this is so. Could it be that you simply turn up with the sick animal, hand over your money and get the service you asked and paid for? You would not return to a veterinary practice if the service was obviously poor. And pet insurance schemes (offered even at supermarkets these days), seem to work just fine. The “solutions” are pretty obvious really. The Government should have nothing to do with healthcare at all, except perhaps for an insistence that everyone takes out insurance. Let companies compete for that insurance. Make having children a costly exercise, to reduce the size of the underclass. It is a wrong-headed sentimentality that keeps the NHS going. It was not created because the poor were going untreated (they were, and doctors made their money on the rich); it was created for ideological reasons. It is of course, morally wrong to provide healthcare free at the point of use: anything which costs you nothing (or feels like it costs you nothing) is not respected. This is an obvious truth; and one which is wilfully ignored.

4.
Your comparison between fully privatised healthcare and veterinary care is a good one. They both have the same fundamental problem in that anyone who cannot afford the insurance cannot get treatment. This leads to many animals being left to suffer or being put down. Obviously we wouldn’t put down an old lady with a broken hip but if she doesn’t have insurance then she has to sell her house and move into a care home. That is a disgusting situation of which there are plenty of terrible examples in the US healthcare system.

Fully privatised healthcare leads to poor care for the most vulnerable in our society.