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Long may NHS thrive
• I AM delighted to read the report of the latest campaign to preserve the NHS and its basic principles and to reaffirm my commitment that it should be comprehensive and democratic, free at the time of use and need.
I congratulate those campaigners pictured in South End Green (Private Care: Yes or No? February 5).
Long may the NHS survive – changed and even modified as Aneurin Bevan envisaged in 1948 – but remaining in its essential form. I hope I will be able to vote in the proposed referendum on NHS Camden’s health contract, and let it be soon. My answer to the question is No.
Avis Hutt
Caversham Road, NW5
Paying GPs
• I AM confused by your editorial (Comment, February 5) that “once a surgery… falls into private hands, efficiency will make way for profit, even at the cost of good health care”.
Surely it is common knowledge that GP practices today are private businesses, run for profit by their owners, the GPs?
And the profits can be quite handsome too – GP partners typically earn more than £100,000, the best income for family doctors in the world.
While there are some who are doing worse than that, there are others who are earning much more as well, as much as £150,000 or even £250,000.
It’s not just Boots and Virgin who are interested in the bottom line, it’s the current owners of GP surgeries.
If you’re worried about the profit motive destroying the ethos of the NHS it’s time to start campaigning for GPs to become employees of the NHS and take a salary.
Steve Hill
Address supplied
So cynical
• How cynical can you get?
The primary care trust is changing its name to NHS Camden, “to make sure that you can instantly recognise and understand what they do and how they can help you”. We all know perfectly well why the trust is changing its name: because it has incurred near-universal loathing by selling NHS practices down the river.
DAI VAUGHAN
Mill Lane, NW6
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