When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World's Most Powerful Consulting Firm

by Walt Bogdanich

McKinsey also amplified the conceit that Britain, with one of the world’s most cost-effective health-care systems, still needed to cut its health budget. “The current system will no longer be affordable soon—real transformational change is needed rapidly,” it said. The reality was that the Conservative government had chosen a path of fiscal austerity amid an economic downturn, a decision that ran counter to the writings of Britain’s own John Maynard Keynes. And with the NHS in its sights, one group critical of the Conservative agenda said, “Those who maintain that we cannot afford the NHS must be made to answer the most important question—if we can’t afford the most cost-effective health service in the world what can we afford?”