Letter: What is happening to our NHS?

He will certainly argue that he took no part in the decision to award this contract to his own surgery but it is difficult not to be sceptical about the whole process. In a previous letter I highlighted the number of doctors and politicians of all persuasions who held shares in private companies who were seeking to make profits from taking over work from the NHS and leaving the NHS services depleted. This is another example of degradation which makes

the closure of DDH a little nearer.

There is a disturbing report in the national press explaining that many patients who received eye cataract treatment by a private healthcare company have experienced disastrous results leaving at least one person blind. Some patients are seeking redress and compensation but ironically it is the NHS who will have to pay and not the private company who did the operations! Perhaps we shall see even more of this from the ex-NHS kidney patients and others, similar to the breast implant fiasco, when things go wrong. This is a scandalous state of affairs but is mirrored all around us where we taxpayers have to pay for the downsides of privatisations such as the pension provisions for the newly privatised Royal Mail but the company and bank bosses still pay themselves telephone number salaries and bonuses. The old adage of ‘heads I lose tails you win’ was never truer.

Dennis Miller

Oxford Road

Gomersal