Private treatment makes no sense to most of us

Published: 17th March, 2011

• NHS private treatment “makes sense”, says Dominic Dodd, chairman of the Royal Free (New Journal, March 10). 

What “sense” was he referring to when he talked to the latest meeting of Camden Council’s health scrutiny meeting?

The phrase is usually “common sense” but his is an “elitist sense” which gives private patients first choice in a two-tier health service. 

This inevitably means rich people from all over the world buying priority for treatments, while local people suffer increasingly long waits. Meanwhile no one mentions the huge debts incurred by many  private patients which the government finds that it cannot claim back. I gather these amount to millions of pounds.

Once the newly-created trust hospitals cannot make the profits expected of them by central government, they can be closed or sold off to the private sector because they are seen as not financially astute.

The government still controls what happens to these supposedly independent trust hospitals, which are at the mercy of its unshakeable and incomprehensible belief in the virtues of the private sector’s “willing providers” (profiteers).

How many of the managers and politicians, who are making these alarming changes to our health service, have private health insurance? 
Sheila Patton
Spencer Rise, NW5