No system is perfect. But the furthest you can get from perfection is a government controlled monopoly, such as education or healthcare. So it's no wonder to find the people who are culpable for what passes for healthcare provision defending it to the hilt, as if it was flawless, and claiming that those who criticize it are, "un-patriotic". (To see an un-patriotic Dan Hannan truthfully answer questions on the NHS, click here).

A healthcare system where users don't have to wait, drugs aren't rationed, care is not substandard and you're not more likely to leave with disease rather than a cure is all people request. What we get is the opposite: and to deny that fact (as Cameron et al. have) is to deny us a proper discussion about how our system needs overhauling. The remote political class are trampling over our desire to discuss the problems we face on a daily basis, a fact made even more galling because undoubtedly the majority of them will hold private health insurance.

Having experienced health care on both sides of the Atlantic, and paid for both (please understand that the NHS isn't free!), the NHS is second in a two horse race. That is not to deny the fact that there is a minority within the NHS who do provide excellent health care. But these people are few and far between, and very difficult to find! Politicians live in a land of ignorant bliss, where unprincipled sound bites dispatch them into a fantasyland detached from the pain that we as a whole suffer on daily basis at the hands of the NHS. We need a system that is driven by people and not politicians and their meaningless targets. To get to that stage though we must first hold a debate.