The National Wealth Service

Need just one reason to continue believing in Labour?

This is what happens when you throw money at health and refuse to coordinate the effort:

Pockets of medical excellence dot the landscape, but at least 100,000 people die each year from infections they acquired in the hospital, while 1.5 million are harmed by medication errors. Of 37 industrialized nations, the United States ranks 29th in infant mortality and among the world's worst on measures such as obesity, heart disease and preventable deaths.

Bright young physicians trained at prestigious and expensive universities enter a profession built on perverse financial rewards. They, like assembly-line workers of the past, are paid on a piecemeal basis, earning more money not by doing better but simply by doing more.

Yet more care rarely translates into better health. Extensive research by Dartmouth College has found the exact opposite: Health outcomes are often best in communities that spend less compared with cities such as Boston and Miami where the medical arms race of specialists and high-tech gadgets often leads to greater risks and injuries.

More here from the Washington Post today on the sadnesses of market-driven healthcare.