Or even, improve the NHS just by having markets in it. Two stories - we do not vouch for the absolute truth of either of them but do want to note the implications if they are indeed both true:

And:

Surgeons at one London hospital are performing an entire week’s operations in a single day as part of a ground-breaking initiative that could help tackle the record waiting lists in the NHS.

Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust has already slashed its own elective backlog in certain specialities by running monthly HIT (High Intensity Theatre) lists at weekends.

Under the innovative model, two operating theatres run side by side and as soon as one procedure is finished the next patient is already under anaesthetic and ready to be wheeled in.

These are both innovations, not inventions. To distinguish - invention is the creation of some new thing. A scalpel, forceps, that sort of thing. Innovation is the ongoing improvement in the way that things are used. Even, inventions to new uses - but still distinct from invention.

And we know the economics of this distinction from William Baumol. Governments, the state, can do inventions about as well as markets. But markets beat the state hands down at innovation. Partly because by their nature markets allow different ways of things to be tried out - the experimentation. Partly because markets - by their very nature - then produce the pressure to adopt more of those things that work.

For example, kiddie’s therapy, the people who maintain the old system with a year wait will be fine in a bureaucratic or planned organisation. In a market one they’ll be bust unless they adopt the policy that leads to the 7 week wait. So too the operating theatre idea - those who don’t do it in competition with those who do will go bust. The incentive to adopt best practice is therefore really up front and personal for all participants - which does make things happen.

We’ve said this before of course but truth bears repetition. One of the things that ails the NHS is the lack of competition - one of the ways to make the NHS better is to have more competition.

A little fun thing: The FT has a beat the Chancellor at the budget game. The rules are from the Resolution Foundation. One of those rules is that anything less than a 4% increase, per year and forever, in the NHS budget is treated as a cut. More markets, more innovation, greater productivity, is how we beat that.

Second fun little thing. Booker T and the MGs had a massive hit with Green Onions back in the day. A follow up record - for why not do more of what works? - was Mo’ Onions (we’ve been unreliably informed that that was titled “Scallions” in the US) which was, effectively, an inversion of the original melody.

So, you know, to follow up on our greatest hits, Mo’ Markets.

Tim Worstall