Our patients are too fat and old ’

But a £25.74 GP appointment is free to even a billionaire. If the 40 per cent who pay prescription charges were asked for £8.40 to see a family doctor that would raise more than £1billion for the NHS.

The sixty per cent who pay nothing now would still pay nothing.

And money-saving offers such as the NHS annual prescription prepayment certificate, costing £ 104, could be extended to cover GP visits.

We already pay for the NHS through taxes. But insurance schemes like those in France and elsewhere in Europe might be another way to finance the service. The World Health Organisation found that France provides “close to the best overall health care” in the world through their government’s insurance scheme.

This refunds 70 per cent of most health costs, and 100 per cent in cases of expensive treatment or long-term illness.

That means patients pay £5.60 to see a GP and £6.37 for a specialist

Premiums of 5.25 per cent are deducted from earned income and gambling winnings. Those on pensions and benefits pay 3.95 per cent. France and Germany have one more doctor per thousand people than Britain does.

We spend more of our national wealth on health care than Italy, Spain and Iceland but less than Greece, Portugal or Austria. Holland, Switzerland and Sweden spend the most.

Another option, of course, is to do away with universal care altogether.

It was revealed last week that Margaret Thatcher hatched secret plans to dismantle the NHS and was only stopped by a near riot within her Cabinet.

But the NHS has been subject to creeping privatisation and a growing proportion of the health budget goes to firms like Virgin Care, Care UK and Bupa.

NHS money poured into the private sector has more than doubled, from £4.1billion in 2010 to £8.7billion last year.

This creates a two-tier health system. But the upside is that private companies are often able to undercut NHS providers and save money, although this can be at the expense of quality of service.

A really radical reformer would nationalise all private hospitals and make private health care providers bid on a level playing field.

Meanwhile, the trouble with NHS charges is they might deter people from seeing their doctors, which is why Germany abolished them in 2013.

But as things stand, the NHS faces only two alternatives to charging: massive increases in taxation to keep it going – or letting it go bust. HEALTH chiefs in one of the country’s worst-performing NHS regions have complained patients are getting older and fatter as they plead for help filling a £547million funding gap. It comes weeks after MPs slammed bosses at the trust for a“catalogue of failures” after they bungled an £800million elderly care deal. A report by NHS trusts in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough – whose hospitals include the famous Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge – admits shortcomings such as A&E delays, slow ambulance response times and staff shortages. But it also blames pressure from obese and ageing patients. It adds: “Some people are demanding more and faster access to healthcare but not taking responsibility for their own health and wellbeing by living healthy lifestyles.”