During the late 80s I worked as an illustrator for Nursing Times. When Margaret Thatcher's government split the NHS into self-governing trusts and created an internal market for services, I began a regular cartoon called "St Opt-Outs", an everyday story of medical folk struggling under the cosh of managers helicoptered in from the private sector. Adverts for life insurance printed on nurse's uniforms. Hot meals bussed in from Bulgaria. Anaesthetic stopping, mid-operation, when a patient's credit card maxed out.
Year by year it seemed less and less preposterous, because those changes were only the beginning of a relentless process, continued by every subsequent government, that led to the Health and Social Care Act of March last year.
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