I think Brits might like to look at the United States as a cautionary tale when it comes to the religion of private industry and efficiencies. The idea that a truly free market will always provide better services at lower prices is accepted on faith among conservatives here, despite negative consequences to people who are not members of the elite.

I'm not just talking about privatization, though I include privatization in my observation that a truly free market is much more likely to benefit the investor class than the ordinary person.

This tendency is especially pernicious in private healthcare, where the investor class enjoys literal life-and-death advantages over hoi polloi.

It's bad enough when the investor class, as in the case of Amazon, buys up retail capacity and then produces "efficiency" by mistreating and underpaying their workers, driving down wages and benefits across the industry and across national economies.

Does anybody really want that for healthcare too?