>I said fragile but I would've mentioned efficacy - it's past midnight. The NHS isn't even that good, but it's hard to bring it up because it's the sacred cow.

NHS does well in the Commonfund healthcare comparisons (https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/other-publicat...), especially given how small a share of UK GDP healthcare spending is. That's certain an argument for its unitary, top-down structure. That same integration, however, makes it vulnerable to the sort of political grandstanding that Private Eye satirized.