There’s nothing I could write today that’s even half as spot-on as yesterday’s Economist leader.

The recipe for saving the NHS requires radicalism, but of a simpler sort: turning the NHS from what it has become—a sickness service—into what its name promises—a health service. That will mean spending more money. But to spend it productively requires a shift in focus: away from hospitals to the community, from treatment to prevention, from incentivising inputs to encouraging better outcomes.

A system focused on hospitals is one designed to treat people only after they have become really sick. That is the equivalent of buying more fire extinguishers while dismantling the smoke alarms.

The whole thing is well worth five minutes of your time.