Health

NHS underfunding is deliberate strategy | Letters


I am greatly saddened to read of the distress caused to a woman with an ectopic pregnancy whose wrong fallopian tube had been removed (Report, 30 May).

The event was an error, the trust has admitted liability and we are not left wondering if it was caused by a profit-making shortcut, because for the time being we have an NHS. Had this been an error in the private sector, no one would have known because any complaint made public would have been swiftly followed by a lawyer’s letter from the company, threatening to sue for bringing the company name into disrepute.

Some of the 13,000 women involved in the substandard breast implant scandal are still, all these years later, reportedly threatened with bailiffs and upset, following their compensation awards, which are now in doubt due to the company lodging an appeal.

The NHS is under threat as never before. A GP in the clinical commissioning group (the people responsible for “procuring” health services and diagnostics etc) said in a meeting in public, that in spite of these (listed) problems with any qualified provider (AQP) contracts for procedures and services, he wants to see more of them. The NHS has been underfunded for nine years. There has been no workforce plan to speak of and promises by government for more GPs have not been kept. Why is this tragic story all over the headlines now? Who benefits from doubts sown about publicly provided, overstretched, underfunded health provision? It’s the standard method of privatisation: underfund, make sure it doesn’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital. Then government pays more, for less.

The time has come for the English to demand our birthright: access to a universal, comprehensive, local health service, free at the point of use. And yes, we can afford it. We cannot afford to ditch it.
Christine Hyde
Dewsbury, West Yorkshire

It’s reassuring to know that the money saved by cutting nursing bursaries has been going to a worthwhile cause (Government spends almost £100m on Brexit consultants, 30 May).
Bob Epton
Brigg, Lincolnshire

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