TO SAY that the NHS is not in crisis would surely be the understatement of the year.

Underfunded is the slogan of many commentators. Both major political parties claim the NHS is safe with them, but is it?

To Labour it’s known as a sacred cow. To the Tories seemingly it’s a huge organisation that can be milked for mass privatisation and profit.

Testimony to this, and its public knowledge that 60 Tory MPs have a vested interest in private companies within the NHS. And it’s not rocket science to know what their agenda would become.

The taxpayers funding the NHS are surely entitled to know how much drugs companies are literally milking the NHS of badly needed finance.

Let’s face it, the NHS was never designed to compete in the market place. Nye Bevan, who helped create the NHS, would turn in his grave if he knew what was going on.

It is shameful it was a Labour government that started selling off bits of the NHS to private companies. The Tories and their wealthy Fleet Street backers, coupled with the BMA were all very hostile to socialised medicine for all when it was brought in in 1948.

Another scandal is the cost of nursing homes and social care for the elderly. One solution to the spiralling costs of such homes, and mooted by none other than the much-maligned Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, is to take all these homes for the elderly into public ownership.

Such an idea would only be a very small financial cost of what we already pay for the very existence of the NHS, and would relieve the elderly and their families of much financial hardship.

It won’t happen under a callous, right-wing Tory government for ideological reasons. Surely a civilised nation and the fifth richest on planet earth could implement such proposals?

The NHS was created for everybody, not to be financially milked by private profiteers, nor to wholesale privatisation.

The moral, ethical and social conscience of the British people wouldn’t stand for it, we know the price of everything and don’t know the value of anybody.

With an ageing population it cannot go on like this. Yes, we’re all living longer, and as yet it is no crime to be old, it’s all about dignity in old age, and people are just as important as money.

ALAN FOYLE
Belgrave Place
Taunton