While Dan Hannan understandably accused the NHS of being Marxian, for NFR he would have done better to point out that it is national socialist in character and practice.

For not only does it engender the worst kind of bogus nationalist and xenophobic – ‘best in the world’ – rhetoric under the guise of patriotism, but in constantly trying to impose a counter-productive egalitarianism (which inevitably leads to all kinds of post-code and political voice lotteries) it marginalises those it purports to look after such as the elderly, the mentally ill and the poor .

Today, there are hundreds of thousands of people on waiting lists, with tens of thousands more trying to get onto them. On average, professional and managerial types receive 40 per cent more resource per illness episode than those at the bottom of the social scale. Ten per cent of NHS patients pick up infections and illnesses during their hospital stays that they did not have prior to being admitted.

Forget Marxism. This is a system that engenders survival of the fittest and through NICE increasingly seeks to legitimate its eugenicist approach to human life.