Future predicitions for the state of the NHS are oh, so common. The latest, a couple of days ago in the Guardian, reports the conclusions of Mike Farrar, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation:

“There are three scenarios,” he adds. “The NHS maintains service standards but goes bust while doing so; it sees standards slip but maintains financial balance; or it keeps improving and stays in the black. Clearly, we all want the third option.”

His intervention comes days after the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, warned that 22 trusts, which between them run 60 hospitals, were on “the brink of financial collapse” because of punishing repayments under private finance initiative deals struck while Labour was in power.

So very different to this scenario dreamed up in the 1950s by Henry Kaiser (of Kaiser Foundation fame) and architect Sydney Garfield. The optimism contrasts well with the ‘realism’ of the present.