Countries, like families, tend to criticise themselves, but still feel aggrieved when they are assailed by outsiders. A case in point is England's National Health Service (NHS), which is both cherished (for the ideal of universal free medicine it represents) and increasingly despised (for the quality of care it actually delivers). But those who seek to change it do so at their peril. Plans recently announced by the government to recruit more foreign doctors, and for nhs patients to be treated abroad, have predictably produced angry reactions. Both ideas make sense, though they have important implications for the future of health care.
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