What do people have in mind when they say the NHS is "not for sale"? Are they imagining US firms buying British hospitals? Or US contractors providing medical services to the NHS? Or US health insurers taking over management of NHS payments & purchasing? What do they mean by it?
Until we have some concrete notion of what is being said when it is alleged that "The US will buy the NHS", how can any of us say for sure whether we are in favour of it or against it?
For example, if the claim is that US medical firms will be able to bid to provide services to the NHS, why would we object to US firms being able to do that any more than we object to French or Germans firms being able to do it? What is so uniquely objectionable about US firms?
Is that all there is to it? Some kind of inchoate xenophobia, whereby French & German firms providing goods & services to the NHS is Good but US firms doing that is Bad? But, if so, is there evidence that UK voters really share that kind of anti-US xenophobia in large numbers?
Or is the expectation that US firms would want to be permitted to do Bad Things in supplying goods & services to the NHS that French or German firms wouldn't want to do? If so, what are these things? And why wouldn't French & German firms want to do them if they could?
If, instead, the thought is that even the French & German firms being able to bid to provide goods & services to the NHS is bad, why not say "Why is the NHS for sale to the French & the Germans?" Why bring the US into it at all?
If it's something to do with not wanting to buy medicines from US firms, why would one think that Swiss or German or Indian or French pharma companies are any less interested in making profits or any more reliable in terms of safety & quality or supply than US firms are?
