While I'm as certain as I can be that this Furness business isn't some sort of intricate conspiracy to prepare public opinion for privatization - in the UK that'd be far too high a risk electorally in the event of a leak - I'm rather less certain that it might not contribute to that consequence over time, and in the longer term.

Not least because when redneck Tea Party Yanks descend on these threads (as they sometimes do; there's a website over there that directs them to overseas stories which could be of ideological interest) to comment on an NHS story, the line is frequently: "your hospitals are death factories because socialized medicine and public facility hospitals only ever offer perfunctory, slip-shod and careless treatment; only competition and the profit motive guarantees While I'm as certain as I can be that this Furness business isn't some sort of intricate conspiracy to prepare public opinion for privatization - in the UK that'd be far too high a risk electorally in the event of a leak - I'm rather less certain that it might not contribute to that consequence over time, and in the longer term.

Not least because when redneck Tea Party Yanks descend on these threads (as they sometimes do; there's a website over there that directs them to overseas stories which could be of ideological interest) to comment on an NHS story, the line is frequently: "your hospitals are death factories because socialized medicine and public facility hospitals only ever offer perfunctory, slip-shod and careless treatment; only competition and the profit motive guarantees first class care".

And there's no shortage of Tory ultras with both sympathy for that philosophy and strong connections to people in the US who take that view; including American conglomerate business interests which would leap at the market opportunity to run a US-style insurance-based private health care service over here.

An example, I suspect, might be ex-minister Liam Fox, himself a medic, and the now defunct charity "The Atlantic Bridge" with which he and his friend Adam Werrity were associated, and which was dissolved following criticism from the Charity Commission - the prelude to the disclosures which led to his resignation from the government.

Stories such as this one readily feed into the agenda of the US neo-liberal free-market right. Too many of them, and consequent diminution of public confidence in the NHS could open a crack in the national door into which certain conglomerates would be only too ready to insert a large, hairy, muscular American toe.

I disagree that social health care necessarily leads to low standards. There is no reason why it can't be a well funded and efficient health care service...

If the people made the decisions it would be...