Are the elderly to blame for the NHS crisis?
AS AN 89-year-old, I’m fed up with hearing that the ageing population is responsible for all that ails the NHS, and the country in general.
We’re not responsible for the chaos in the maternity wards, nor for the large influx of new patients in waiting rooms and clinics.
It isn’t us who are taken to Casualty, drunk and incapable, at weekends. We aren’t health tourists — we’ve paid in since the inception of the NHS.
We aren’t to blame for classrooms overflowing with children unable to speak English. It’s not our fault the population has exploded or that there’s a desperate housing shortage.
We occupy our own homes only because we worked, saved, budgeted and didn’t get into debt. We went without what we couldn’t afford. We draw the State pension, but that isn’t a ‘benefit’ — we paid in for it.
There are many, like my husband who worked from the age of 14 to 65 (apart from four years serving the country as air crew during the war), who have never claimed benefits.
If our health deteriorates, we end up in a home, but that, too, we have to pay for if we have any assets.
It’s high time our contribution to society was recognised. The blame for the state of this much-loved country should be placed elsewhere.
KATHARINE SUMNER, Boston, Lincs. IT’S NAIVE in the extreme for Ed Miliband to make promises concerning NHS funding support for service improvements when the core problem isn’t being challenged. The total NHS budget is £95.6 billion and Miliband’s suggestion of £2.5 billion from a mansion tax etc is only a 2.5 per cent difference. The NHS’s problems are more complex. There is a growing population, made worse by immigration. The Government forecast is 8 per cent population growth in England by 2020 — another 5,000,000 people within five years. Meanwhile, life expectancy has grown by 4.6 per cent. Longer life exposes people to a higher risk of diseases such as cancer. According to the latest MacMillan forecast, one in every two people will have cancer at some point. And improved medical treatment increases survival rates for all sorts of conditions, adding to the need for NHS aftercare. Given that Miliband isn’t tackling the core issues, there’s no likelihood of an additional £2.5 billion taxation having any effect on NHS funding.
NEIL G. MacARTHUR, Hertford.