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Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm James Hill and I'm joined today by Katie

Balls and Kate Andrews. Now today is of course 75 years since the NHS was founded.

Kate, how will you be celebrating this auspicious occasion?

Well, I've certainly been focused on the day. Almost all of my attention has gone into this.

I've been watching and ranking and a lot of the tributes that have been going out. I haven't

done my own yet. You know, I need to see what else is out there. If I'm going to top the best one,

I'm going to have to do something bigger than the Westminster Abbey Thanksgiving service,

which saw the Prime Minister do a reading, the leader of the opposition, do a reading,

the chief exec of NHS England, Amanda Pritchard, you know, suspended her title for just a moment

and essentially became a reverend as she did her address. And we've had some beautiful comments

from the dean who did the formal sermon. I enjoyed him saying that the NHS sets before us all the

better angels of our nature. Here is high principle translated into best practice. Best practice

may be debated, of course not today, because today we only revered. But in future, it may be

debated as there's essentially no study that I've ever been able to find that shows the NHS

outcomes for patients doing better than mediocre on international rankings. Usually it's extremely

poor. The latest one found that in terms of saving lives, the NHS basically ranked last in Europe.

So one might say that the celebrations today don't fully or accurately reflect what's really

going on in the health service, but James, who are we to, you know, drag down such an auspicious

...