Polly Toynbee explains why the NHS should be privatised

Not, admittedly, what we would expect to hear from Polly but the case she makes for the privatisation of the NHS is logically perfect:

Ration life! Limit the value of a good year of human life to £13,000 to spend on any one drug, says a report from Prof Karl Claxton of York University. Spend more, and other patients die for lack of funds.

That’s the crunch point in NHS funding, according to health economists at York University, inventors of the original notion of measuring health spending by Qaly – a quality adjusted life year. If all health spending was put through this rigorous analysis of ensuring every pound bought the best value, there would be a remarkable shift in NHS priorities. Mental health would score highest, not lowest, in spending, as each pound can buy the most effective diminution of intense suffering. Suicides are rising, most among young men in deprived areas – deaths that could be preventable at reasonably low cost. Instead, a minor operation may take priority, as headline waiting time targets matter more politically.

During a period of the steepest cuts per capita the NHS has ever known, the government has weakened attempts to ration rationally.

Politics, being politics, means that the NHS is being run irrationally. The solution is therefore to remove the NHS from being run by politics. That part of national life which is not run by politics is known as "the private sector".

Thus the NHS should be privatised. QED.

And do remember, it's not us telling you this, that's Polly Toynbee saying it.