Who's the Telegraph's accident-prone new star?

“There’s a reason young people like me hate the NHS,” ran a headline on a comment piece in the Daily Telegraph last week, as Joanna Marchong outlined her myriad issues with the nation’s health system.

The accident-prone Gen Z-er detailed how she had been taken to hospital after managing to fracture an elbow and ankle in separate incidents, both times failing to be seen within the NHS’s four-hour target.

“No wonder around one in six people paid to bypass NHS waiting lists last year,” she fumed. “That figure will keep climbing, specifically among young people. No, it is not a generational betrayal of solidarity. It is a rational response from people who have, like me, waited far too long to be seen.”

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Laying out all her issues with universal healthcare, she went on: “Private providers, by contrast, operate under competitive pressure to deliver reliable services. Where patients can choose, providers must focus on speed and the quality of outcomes. That dynamic produces shorter waits for diagnostics.”

Space, alas, prevented Marchong from mentioning another reason why she might hate the NHS. Nowhere in the piece, even at the end, does it mention that she is head of communications and external affairs for the Adam Smith Institute, a right wing think tank long opposed to treatment free at the point of need and who last year published an essay on its website with the unambiguous title “How to fix the NHS: privatisation”.

Previously she was investigations campaign manager for opaquely-funded think tank the Taxpayers’ Alliance, another body which has long campaigned against the NHS and its funding model. But as far as Telegraph readers are concerned, she’s just an average 20-something gal with an unfortunate habit of tripping over!