We have surrounded what we call the liberal professions in a cloud of mumbo-jumbo and self-righteous self-importance. The sooner much of this is cut away the better but some of the nonsense the Competition Authority has come out with about health care needs and deserves to be challenged. It is of the opinion, in public, that if there was more competition in the provision of health care, the consumer would be better off and prices would drop. The problem is that there is an infinite demand for health care. As there is no limit to the demand, the more that is provided the more people will want. If we have competitive provision based on market principles, we end up with a more expensive health service – as has happened in the USA where the health service is the most expensive in the world, costing 14% of the GDP. The USA is the richest country in the world: according to the way economists present these figures, it is perhaps 25% richer than most countries in Europe, yet it costs Americans that much more to have a health service which has singularly failed to give them a life expectancy as high as that of many countries in Europe and has tragically failed to give them an infant mortality rate comparable with that of the best countries in Europe.