The country must accept that a ‘free at point of use’ NHS is no longer sustainable

SIR – I am retired. My wife is a GP who is nearing retirement. We are taking out private medical insurance because we can no longer trust the NHS to provide a timely response to possible future medical issues.

The NHS wastes vast sums in inefficiencies, poor communications, last-century IT and multiple other ways. There could be perhaps 10 per cent cost savings made in the long term. However, this will not totally resolve the problem of funding for the rapidly ageing population.

Surely it must be time to drop the “free NHS for all” mantra, as it is now totally unsustainable. It is also totally untrue – the NHS is paid for by taxation. It is time to introduce some form of additional insurance policy for additional service. This will also be an incentive for us all to work hard and reap more.

Martyn Bennett

Bodenham, Herefordshire

SIR – I have had occasion to contact my GP surgery three times within the past month. On each occasion it has taken most of a day on repeat calling to get through, as the line is constantly engaged. I have then been held in a queue for up to 40 minutes before reaching a care navigator. As a direct result, a minor urinary tract infection, which could have been quickly treated with the correct antibiotics, turned into a severe kidney infection, resulting in a week off work.

Once you get into the system you are extremely well looked after by nursing and medical staff. It is getting access in the first place that is the issue, and why patients go direct to emergency departments or even go private. Deborah Castle Little Kingshill, Buckinghamshire SIR – Will Curtis (Letters, November 20) bemoans the success of locum agencies in enticing nurses moving from poorly paid NHS jobs to lucrative agency jobs, doing the same work – often within the same hospital.

Has he not heard of market forces? I recently left an NHS position paying £200 a day for private work that pays me £1,800 a day. If the Government is going to make such a pig’s ear of the economy and so mismanage the production of energy, I and others like me have to find work that is more lucrative.

Dr Steven R Hopkins

Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire

SIR – An elderly relative had a heart operation in April, after which she was re-admitted to hospital three times.

Her family – who have been picking up the pieces caused by this over the summer – are certain that had the first hospital discharge been handled properly, and had she been sent to a safe place for convalescence to rebuild her strength before returning home, the three later admissions would not have been necessary.

A hospital stay, particularly when a general anaesthetic has been administered, brings about a huge deterioration in elderly people, especially where dementia or Alzheimer’s are involved. Patients often fail to realise this and reject offers of care when they are discharged, with inevitable results. Of course we respect people’s desire to get back to their own homes, but they must be genuinely able to do so safely.

It is surely far more efficient to provide care and convalescence in a residential setting, than to have care workers travelling around visiting people in their own homes for a rushed hour here and there, but there is a massive shortage of care-home places, even if you are willing and able to self-fund.

There is much talk of getting 50 and 60-year-olds back to work, but many of us are on our knees struggling to care for needy and vulnerable aged parents and relatives.

Rebecca Bartleet

Latchley, Cornwall