The Health Bill is terminally Sick
It is unresponsive to consumer pressure, chaotically managed, poor at communication and inefficient.
No other country in the world - many of which achieve far better care outcomes than the NHS - runs its health care services in the 1940s-style way we do.
The NHS is a museum piece.
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For the last 25 years, both Tory and Labour governments have recognised at least some of these flaws.
Endless attempts - from GP fund-raising, the internal market, and primary care trusts to polyclinics, independent treatment centres and clinical commissioning groups - have been made to break down the public sector monopoly of the NHS and introduce choice, competition and private sector investment.
None has been introduced coherently or worked properly.
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Now the latest bid to reform the NHS has come badly unstuck.
Cabinet ministers and senior officials at No 10 are speculating that the Bill is doomed and should be dropped.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley knows his job is on the line. One Downing Street source has said Lansley 'should be taken out and shot'.
Tim Montgomerie, editor of the influential ConservativeHome website, has concentrated minds as the much diluted Lansley Bill returns to the House of Lords for yet another mauling.
In an eloquent and insightful article, Montgomerie has pointed out that Dave faces an unenviable dilemma.
He could effectively abandon the Bill and suffer the humiliation of backing down on a flagship piece of legislation, which Lansley has described as the biggest reorganisation in NHS history.
Ed Miliband would have a field day.
Or Cameron could press on and use his Commons majority to ensure the Bill becomes law.
But if he does that, as Montgomerie rightly warns, every problem in the NHS from now to the next election, will be blamed (almost certainly wrongly) on the Bill.
The electoral penalty for the Tories and their Lib Dem allies is likely to be severe. Interfering with the NHS might well cost the Conservatives the next election.
Today, ministers have taken to the airwaves to defend the Bill and to insist it will hand greater power to patients, put doctors and nurses in charge of health services, and cut bureaucracy and costs.
Should he stay or should he go? Health Secretary Andrew Lansley knows his job is on the line
Speaking out: Tim Montgomerie editor of the influential ConservativeHome website, called for Mr Lansley to go on the Today Programme this morning
The problem is that after more than a year of debate few people believe this.
Most of the public and the medical and nursing professions oppose the Bill and vehemently deny it will bring the benefits that ministers claim for it.
The blunt truth is that Cameron and Lansley have lost the communications battle.
In recent weeks and months, despite last summer's 'pause' to listen to critics and supposedly fix the legislation, the tide of opinion has been steadily moving away from the Government.
Cameron is fond of saying that before introducing fundamental changes, governments have first to roll the pitch. In this case, he has not followed his own advice.
It may be that since the NHS is the nearest the British have to an organised religion, it would have been impossible to persuade the public of the case for a major health service shake-up.
But right now the pitch looks more like a cart track than the manicured turf of Dave's imagination.
Montgomerie and Cabinet ministers fearful of grave political fallout want the Bill either neutered or dropped entirely.
But the betting is that Cameron is in too deep to back down.
He is likely to pay a high price for meddling with the nation's favourite sacred cow
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2099339/Heath-Bill-Why-David-Cameron-ploughing-it.html#ixzz1m1zU0YCn
