The NHS and its Alternatives

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The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) is now 73 years old. As the love child of post-war socialist idealism and the obliteration of the United Kingdom by the Luftwaffe, Nye Bevan’s establishment of the NHS in 1948 was the culmination of an “audacious” bi-partisan campaign which called for the provision of healthcare “free at the point of delivery,” regardless of class and financial ability.

In the decades since, the NHS has come to represent a unique hallmark of British dynamism and altruistic solidarity; a “beautiful” sacred cow. Often heralded as the superior system in comparison to the “free-market,” insurance-based healthcare of the USA, the NHS has been fetishised by Britons and granted sacrosanct status, complete with its own annual day of celebrations and a ceremonialSupermarine Spitfire.