NHS reaches 1.4 million employees

Socialized Medicine has this piece:

"It's official: the National Health Service is the fifth largest organisation in the world. The fact has emerged in an email from the Department of Health, disputing a Telegraph report that it is the third largest after the Chinese Army and the Indian Railways.

Jon Hibbs, the NHS head of news, said: "Still peddling that old chestnut about the NHS being the third largest organisation in the world? You may be interested to know that our best intelligence suggests our world ranking is as follows: Chinese People's Liberation Army, 2.3m; US Dept of Defence, 2m; Indian Railways, 1.5m; Walmart, 1.5m.

"So that makes the NHS, despite continual growth to more than 1.3m, at least fifth largest in the world - if you don't count McDonald's, where estimates are as many as 12m, although most of their operations are franchised...."

Read the rest here.

What a bureaucracy!