The Tax Payers Alliance has release a staggering new piece of research. They claim that the NHS’ performance, measured in avoidable deaths, is improving at a constant rate despite massive increases in spending. Reforms focused on improving the quality of health care could save 12,000 lives annually.

A major new report from the campaign group, using data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and applying a method pioneered in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), exposes how the huge increase in healthcare spending since 1999 has had no discernible effect on mortality rates.

Of course, each death is a dramatic tragedy for each family affected, but if all that extra money is really having no discernible effect on health outcomes then it is also worth remembering the less dramatic tragedies caused by the enforced poverty of a highly taxed economy, all the little problems suffered through lack of money or time to address them and all the little pleasures sacrificed in order to fund a National Health System that is no better than before.