I am not sure how Nick Blakey thinks the NHS is currently funded (Letters, 7 December). The whole point is that we all pay through general taxation for the government to provide a health service that is fit for purpose. The taxation system also ensures that we pay according to our means. We thereby provide a collective pot of money from which we can all take according to our needs. While clearly this has a socialist outlook, in my view it is the basic system of a well organised and caring society. The French system described by Nick is a benefit only to those who can afford to pay to visit the GP and who can afford to take out the necessary insurance. What about those who cannot afford to do so?
Starving the NHS of vital funds is clearly having the effect desired by the government. The plan is to run the system down to a point where it is regularly failing, thus driving people to go private, then blame everyone else and push to introduce a fully private health system to replace the “failed” public model. Surely everyone can see the writing on the wall?
Philip Collier
Bolton, Greater Manchester
Nick Blakey is undoubtedly correct in his praise of the French health system. When I was working as a GP, I had various retired patients with property in France, who would spend six months of the year over there. They would regale me with their positive experiences of French healthcare, and then ask me for a six-month supply of their regular medication on the NHS in preparation for returning, as in France they would have to pay for all their medication. Somehow they didn’t see the irony of the request.
Dr Audrey Boucher
Basingstoke, Hampshire
The letters on people being forced to pay for private healthcare represent the desperate positions people increasingly find themselves in after 13 years of the Conservative government’s systematic underfunding of the NHS. However, Nick Blakey’s solution is not the answer. It isn’t a question of who pays, but how much we pay.
The Commonwealth Fund report in 2020 shows France spending 20% per person more on health than the UK ($5,154 compared with $4,290 [£3,376]). If the UK had this level of investment, we would have better access to health services, as we did between 1997 and 2010 when Labour were last in power.
John O’Sullivan
Brighton
