SIR - The Government is imposing on the NHS, by choice, £22 billion worth of “efficiency savings” by 2020, thus damaging its ability to provide, safe, reliable care to patients.
Yet, we are told patients dying in corridors or waiting ages for surgery can be blamed on other reasons. This crucially leaves out the fact that one in six A&E departments is set to be downgraded or closed over the next four years.
First, it was migrants clogging up the system. Then, people attending A&E for non-emergency reasons got the blame.
Now, the latest ‘excuse’ being put forward is foreign patients using the service. This, despite so-called health tourism only amounting to 0.3 per cent of NHS spending.
There is certainly ‘bedblocking’ in hospitals where unsatisfactory, underfunded social care means elderly people cannot be discharged because there is nowhere for them to go. But the main reason for the current crisis constantly highlighted on our TVs and in the wider media recently, is the NHS is being denied the funds it needs to function properly, by the Government.
David Hornsby, West View Avenue, Wrose
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