@Vampire victum,
I completely despise the NHS (I know most people regard criticizing the NHS as an act worse than kicking a puppy).
I come at it from the aspects of von Mises' "calculation problem", Hayek's "knowledge problem", Hayek's observation expressed in "Road to Serfdom" that in coercive institutions, the worst people always rise to the top, and Rothbard's finding that a monopoly cannot exist on a free market (it requires coercion to keep competition from entering the market and offering the customers a better deal).
Hence both theoretically and empirically, the NHS (and state, and any other institution where payment is extracted by coercion, instead of by customers freely choosing ammongst competing providers for the goods and services which best suit them) are coercive (monopoly) institutions, and are in a constant state of calculational chaos, haven't a clue what they should be doing, and they are headed by the unproductive parasitic narcissistic and psychopathic scum that always jostle their way to the top in such institutions.
Even from the point of the 18th and 19th century classical economists, a monopoly would still (ceteris paribus) provide fewer and lower quality goods at higher price than freely competing providers would.
Unfortunately most of the population are so gas lit (by the psychopaths and narcs that rise to the top in coercive institutions) that they actually believe the NHS is somehow a good thing.
also unfortunately, you do get some good people, even in the worst of institutions - they tend to either realize that they don't fit and get out, get hurt and leave, broken, of get corrupted and go along to get allong. But, until they get out or get corrupted, they can still present a caring human face to an institution of brutal and chaotic centrally planned rationing.
ok, blue touch paper lit, stand back and enjoy the explosive display of Stockholme syndrome;)