How to pay for healthcare

Published: 9 September, 2010

• YOUR leader (Comment, September 2) on Camidoc’s demise raises some important considerations of our priorities.

The cost of our ageing population is calculated by the IMF to be 335 per cent of GDP, that is almost £200,000 for every British household.

Are we prepared, or able, to fund our health service to this amount?

NHS spending rose from 6.6 per cent of GDP in 2001 to almost 10 per cent in 2010, but when I rang Camidoc for the first time in my life a couple of Sundays ago, I was cheerfully told to go to A&E, which I could have done without Camidoc.

I would have preferred to contribute to the cost of seeing a locum.

In order to keep our healthcare as fair as possible, we must, therefore, accept a reasonable balance between private and public funding, which will mean taking personal responsibility for our choice of lifestyle and the health treatment we demand.

Should we continue to view medicine as a public right, to be distributed equally to all citizens, like law enforcement, or should we think of it in the same way as we do other purchases, such as food and housing?

France, Germany, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Japan have mixed public and private schemes, such as insurance, means-testing, payment for hospital and doctor visits, which deliver greater customer satisfaction than does the British system.

JENNY WRIGHT
Kentish Town