So now we know the latest steps being proposed to make the NHS into a full-blown private health service, just like it was before 1948.

The various steps to achieve this supreme goal of the private marketeers have been prepared right from the start with great care.

First, Tony Blair encouraged and then pressured NHS hospitals to become foundation trust hospitals, with more independence and financial self-reliance - the first nudge towards becoming self-standing suppliers within a competitive market.

David Cameron took this further by announcing that all health services would be open to tender by any qualified provider.

That began the massive process of privatising and outsourcing every chunk of the NHS that the free marketeers, nearly always a very small cabal of the biggest healthcare multinationals, could get their hands on - or rather teeth into.

Meanwhile the Lansley plan for the wholesale privatisation of the NHS had been hatched in deepest secrecy between the Tory high command and the big private healthcare companies before the election, with not a word about it in the Tory 2010 manifesto because if it had been known it would have blown the Tories away.

But all the time the mantra was repeated that the NHS would remain free at the point of service.

But now the cat has been let out of the bag - that the Tories and their big corporate friends had in fact intended all along that it would become a fully paid-for service. Only they didn't dare say so before now.

Norman Warner, an ex-civil servant Tory Blairite camouflaged as a Labour health minister, let it be known in the Guardian that the NHS is "an outdated, cosseted and unaffordable healthcare system ... which no longer meets the country's needs ... and is often poor value for money."

We now see why the Tories, especially Jeremy Hunt, have been so keen to demean and vilify the NHS on every occasion they can over the last several months - cue the need to junk the old, failing NHS and to announce the dawn of a brand-new burnished private healthcare system and - what a surprise - you're going to have to pay for it if you want to get any medical attention.

Oh yes, they've fixed the initial fee at the loss leader level of £10 a month, but don't be taken in by that.

Remember tuition fees. Originally we were assured they'd be held at £3,000, but then as soon as the Tories got in, they tripled them to £9,000 to "market-clearing" levels.

If every adult in the country paid the £10 a month, this new tax would raise £5.4 billion. If that were tripled, it would offer serious money for the healthcare privateers.

It is incredible that Warner has the gall to claim the NHS is "unaffordable" without mentioning that the Tories have deliberately imposed a £20bn cut on the NHS over the current five-year period to put it under intolerable strain and potential breakdown in order to pave the way for a fully paid-for private service, which has always been their secret aim.

But then the Tories would never put profit at risk by telling the truth.

Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton. For more of his writing visit www.michaelmeacher.info/weblog