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Here's the thing that always gets me about the anti state pro free market argument: state ownership and socialist policies came about because the free market created a massive disparity in wealth and prosperity : leading to enormous social ill.
Healthcare is a typical example of that. It was entirely a free market matter, along with education and housing. The result was a permanent layer of absolute and immovable poverty. Slums, chronic ill health, illiteracy and no way out. That was what the free market built.
The middle tier of society grew more prosperous whilst paying taxes for social provision. The country grew wealthier with more generous benefits.
It wasn't the benefits bill that put us in the red : it was the cost of dismantling it combined with reckless credit systems, bank bailouts and tax breaks for a class of oeople who save more than they spend.
Crippling or privatising public services leads job losses and greater inefficiency (as with the rail service) and siphons money out of the pockets of the spending class into the accounts of the saving class.
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