I'm in a London Airport on the way to the Adam Smith Institute's "Future of European Rail" conference in Rome. I've a short wait so I devour the free newspapers left out by those nice people at British Airways. And in the robustly anti-free-market Observer, I spot a headline story that private-sector radiology scans, contracted out to the private sector by the state-run NHS, have experienced lots of delays which have, of course, inconvenienced NHS patients. Does this prove that only state healthcare can actually deliver?

Hardly. The very reason why the NHS is now contracting out so much - X-rays, hip operations, replacement corneas, you name it - is because the private sector is doing such a good job for it. Some providers, especially those from overseas who haven't been corrupted by our lackadaisical way of delivering healthcare, are showing that they can do the same procedures as the NHS but eight times cheaper, and faster too.

The radiology problem is that X-ray pictures have been sent overseas for analysis, where language difficulties and other snags have caused delays. Of course, the NHS would never have dreamt of using overseas labour itself; the unions would never have allowed it. And no doubt the supplier will overcome these snags: it's still early days, after all. And there's another crucial point. If the NHS thinks its suppliers are failing, it can go to someone else. That alone should be enough to keep suppliers on their toes. You don't get that kind of useful pressure in the parts of the NHS that are still run by the government and delivered by public-sector monopoly staff.