Maybe just maybe the NHS will gain more support when some of our wonderful nurses remember to feed wash and water our elderly parents.

Sour grapes. Until the left accepts that it had 10 years in which it could have put the NHS and the economy in fabulous shape - - and instead, wrecked both, there can't be any intelligent discussion. The left created the mess. WHY ? HOW ? What is the best that can happen next? The left may be intellectually superior to the right. But that's not superior enough.

Lox, you are right in the sense that the French system is partly private BUT I happen to believe that you can achieve a good system , as good as the French, without parts of it being private. I don't think the French system is good BECAUSE it makes use of the private sector. I think it is good DESPITE the use of the private sector.It is good simply because so much money is dedicated to it as the French make it a priority.
The good thing about the British NHS is that it is free at the point of care.But in France you know longer have to pay upfront and almost everyone has their health care paid 100%. You now have a health card which enables you to get treatment free when you need it.
I don't understand why you are saying the French haven't got an NHS. It is entirely organised by the state and yes it is still I believe the best in the world.

The Lib Dems will have to join the Tories wholesale if any of them want a future parliamentary career because very few people are going to vote for their party again.

@ Freeman & @moss78

Indeed, the LibDems are doomed now, but that's scant consolation for losing the NHS is it?

We all need to take this fight on until it becomes Cameron's poll tax moment.

This was not what the British public voted for.

Thank goodness that there is still some part of our parliamentary system from which it remains possible to speak from outside the nasty but inevitable union between, on the one hand, what has always been the anti-parliamentary New Left and, on the other hand, the sociologically indistinguishable New Right's arrival at hatred of Parliament as the natural conclusion of its hatred of the State.

For those who keep such scores, the House of Lords has a higher proportion of women, a higher proportion of people from ethnic minorities, a broader range of ethnic minorities, and far more people from working-class backgrounds generally and the trade union movement in particular, than can be found down the corridor. More significantly, and despite the very hard efforts of successive governments, it also retains a broader range of political opinion, more reflective of the country at large. But that is under grave threat, both from the party machines and from the way of all flesh.

The future composition of the House must be secured, at least in part, by providing for each current life peer, at least who attends very or fairly regularly, to name an heir, by no means necessarily or even ordinarily a relative, but rather a political and a wider intellectual soul mate, who would become a peer upon his or her nominator's death, and who would thus acquire the same right of nomination.

The removal from our body politic of hereditary barons and their aristocratic social conscience followed logically and inescapably from the removal of trade union barons as the voice of organised labour, leaving only a bourgeoisie stripped of previous moderating influences such as religion and the realisation that a middle class can only exist by means of extensive central and local government action.

Attlee not only created 82 hereditary peerages, and not only took an earldom on his own retirement. He also created eight promotions within the peerage. I don't see how his commitment to the principle could have been any clearer than that. But set within the whole of the above context. Of course.

Lost with the lickspittle LibDems voting against and Shirley Williams not even voting.Of course it is about the marketisation and privatisation of the NHS.Lansley is funded by the private health companies swirling like vultures for the kill,he is merely doing their bidding.Sad day.

Daniele, why do you think that a monopoly provider of anything is likely to be effective? Why do you believe that private sector provision of healthcare is bad?

let's face it, nothing surprising about what happened.
After all who among the "lords" use the NHS? I would like to have a survey among them. I bet you'll find 99% of them simply have private insurance and just have no stake in saving the NHS.( you will find the same with education, all the lords having sent their little darlings to private schools).
It is a sad day but in this class ridden political structures, it was a predictable defeat.
What I cannot accept is the APATHY of most voters to what was being done to THEIR NHS! where were the demonstrations? the chants? the anger? the outrage?
let's face it, as long as the British people are not prepared to fight for their rights and what they have fought for in the past, they deserve to lose what was the best British institution.
If such a threat was made against the French NHS,there would be a second French revolution, I can assure you.

Daniele - I so agree with you. I have been doing my bit through the 38 degree campaign. I signed the recent Lords petition and all that came previously. I posted the petition on my Facebook. Out of all my contacts on 2 bothered to link to my post. Apathy? Laziness? Who knows.

Sad sad day. We know what is to come. We only have to look at the vultures that have a vested interest in the US healthcare system.

One of the problems the left have is that they lack a punch to the solar plexus. Here is an article about one of the most insiduous pieces of legislation being introduced in the last 70 years and Joan Bakewell, a towering intellect, introduces it by talking about how willowly the opening speaker is? The rest of the article continues in the same fluffy 'love me' vein.
I despair.
Grow a pair and fight fer Christ's sake - no matter how cosy the House of Lords is.