Scandalous waste of money in NHS

Colin Bullen is right about the waste in the NHS, which is a national scandal, while the Green Party ‘tilt at windmills’ using the NHS crisis to promote their pet subjects. (KM letters March 3)

The total cost of PFI in the NHS is £76 billion. Stoke hospital cost £370 million to build, but with PFI will cost £2.7 billion. A total waste of £2.33 billion which would have paid for essential services and treatment deemed too expensive.

Mismanagement, waste and wrong priorities are far bigger problems than underfunding, some £5 billion having been identified by experts as wasted money. Only recently an official report stated the NHS was paying £1 billion more for drugs than necessary and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. The enthusiasts for yet more money to be hurled into the NHS bottomless pit, have no sense of financial responsibility, any understanding of economics, or any idea of the billions in waste. It’s about time politicians stopped standing about like witnesses at an accident and blaming everybody except themselves and got a grip on the NHS shambles. Phil Granger Alma Road, West Malling back. We must now use all at our disposal to reach out and build new relationships.

My ‘mini-internships’ have today created a new bridge with influential and good people at Howard University in the US. Perhaps similar opportunities might become available for students from Kent, even Maidstone and the Weald, sometime soon in Washington. You can be sure I will be investigating all possibilities.