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Health and Social Care Bill

I have actually gone in to the story of Kaiser Permanente very carefully. It is not surprising that if you choose the very best example in another country you can make a favourable comparison. I am talking about the outcomes for a whole population rather than a particular part of a population. I have said already that there are certainly areas where competition can play a very important part—I referred to innovation and new ideas—but I am simply putting on the record that if you look at the comparison between the health services of the 11 most advanced, richest and most industrialised countries in the world, the combination of integration and competition that we have here appears to have rather better outcomes than in those countries that rely much more heavily on competition such as the United States.