The NHS has plunged down the rankings in Bloomberg’s Health Care Efficiency Index this year, falling 14 positions from 21st to 35th. The UK now ranks below Algeria, Mexico, Costa Rica and China in the efficiency of its healthcare provision. The Top 10 is dominated by Asia-Pacific countries including Hong Kong, Korea and Australia. None of those countries have a single monolithic provider of socialised healthcare.
‘Healthcare reform’ does not mean adopting the US system wholesale as critics like to claim or pouring billions into an unreformed system – 16 other European countries manage to come in ahead of the UK, while the US languishes almost 20 places below. Politicians from all parties never tire of claiming that “Our NHS”TM is the envy of the world, this is simply not true…
Months ago Dominic Cummings was shopping around polling that he had done showing that the Tories could win the next election almost only by conceding the NHS argument and splurging more money on it. Remember Boris going public on the need to spend more money on the NHS at the beginning of the year? He had seen the polling and been won over by the argument. Which of course also conveniently solved that exhortion-on-the-side-of-a-bus problem for Boris which obstructed, like a stalled bus, the path to him becoming PM. Theresa May today calling the £20 billion NHS spending hike “a Brexit dividend” paves the way for Boris to argue at either a leadership hustings or a general election that the government has delivered on the exhortion he made. 
It’s the second time in as many days that a major broadcaster has pulled this trick (
No wonder Corbyn got exactly the answers he came looking for…
