NHS

After years of investment by the Labour Government to vastly improve the failing mess it inherited in 1997, services are now to be handed over to private providers, whose first motive must be profit.

When they have successfully driven the NHS out of the “profitable” surgery area, they will be able to charge what they want.

Costs and waiting lists will inevitably rise again.

Recent treatment I have received has been excellent, and I think the NHS is wonderful.

I urge all voters to resist this risky and ill-thought-out policy.

Protect our NHS.

H Davies, Crook.

IS our health care system the best in the world, the envy of every other country? Or would we rather be cared for in France or Germany?

According to official sources the NHS employs approximately 1.5 million people and is the third largest employer in the world, after the Chinese and Indian armies.

The same sources claim a further 420,000 people are working in private health care.

If true these figures represent a greater proportion of health care workers per head of population than almost any other country in the developed world yet, almost every day we hear that more people in every category are required.

Are we really such a sick nation?

Official sources also suggest that productivity in the public sector has fallen by 24 per cent in recent years whilst it has risen by a similar amount in the private sector. Maybe this has something to do with the state of our health care system.

Before the outcry over cuts gets too severe can we have some facts and figures so that we can all judge whether we are getting value for money and perhaps why we should change systems to mirror some of the nations seemingly more successful in this vital area.

PR Davies, Darlington.

THE Government is determined to reform the NHS by abolishing the primary care trusts (PCTs), and giving groups of GPs the power to commission the hospital and other services that their patients need.

These GP groups will have very substantial annual budgets.

They will probably employ some former employees of the PCTs to control their finances and administer the system.

However, this fundamental reorganisation of the NHS will be very difficult to achieve. PCT managers and staff will be expected to deliver increases in efficiency over the next few years while living with the prospect of redundancy.

The NHS has to become more efficient. People are living longer and the cost of running the NHS is increasing by about four per cent every year. It simply isn’t possible for these ever-increasing costs to be funded by the taxpayers in perpetuity.

An alternative to the Government’s plan would be to retain the existing structure and drastically reduce wasteful bureaucratic activity. That would not be easy, but it would have the advantage of being evolution rather than revolution.

It may be useful to recall words attributed to Titus Petronius in the Satyricon almost 2,000 years ago: ‘’We trained hard but every time we had formed up into teams we were reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.’’ Jim Allan, Hartlepool.