Paying for NHS care

SIR – As a former hospital consultant, I found Kate Andrews’s article on the funding of the NHS (Comment, October 24) to be a breath of fresh air.

The curse of the NHS is that it is funded from the top down. This usually produces inefficiency and often leads to corruption. Instead, the money should be disbursed to the population in the form of health cards that are topped up annually.

These would also serve as entitlement cards, which would eliminate health tourism. Ian Strachan

Blairgowrie, Perthshire