Boris Johnson’s NHS prescription: more control, less competition
The government sets out its plan for the first major health-service legislation in a decade
ONCE UPON a time, an ambitious young Tory MP could write columns mocking bien-pensant pieties about the health service—dinner-party attendees who thought “how maahvellous it was that the duke and dustman were treated alike in our glorious New Jerusalem, watching the same TV, eating the same spotted dick, attended by the same starch-bosomed nurses.” When that was written, in 2004, Tories liked to flirt with the idea of adopting the social-insurance systems seen in much of Europe. At the very least, they would argue, the health service’s internal market ought to be sharpened to raise standards and cut costs.
This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Hands on”
Britain February 13th 2021
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- Britons are keen to share their vaccine supplies
- British business is in surprisingly good shape
- Britain’s belated quarantine scheme
- Migration between England, Scotland and Northern Ireland is falling
- The British establishment is the world’s most open—for a price
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