WHILE the Conservative party’s new health policy would ease the National Health Service’s short-term financial difficulties, it would jeopardise the service’s quality and equity in the long term (News and News Review, last week).

In the short term, David Cameron implied that the party would go further than the government in commissioning private sector companies to treat NHS patients. This is essential if the service is to negotiate the next few years when spending increases will slow but cost commitments — including extra staff, prescribing and PFI projects — will accelerate. A £7 billion deficit is projected in 2010 unless productivity improves dramatically and competition from private companies is the key to that productivity improvement.

Cameron rightly pointed to the rising costs facing all healthcare systems due to improvements in medical technology and ageing populations. But a service funded by taxes alone, as Cameron proposed, cannot hope to meet these costs; indeed, the NHS is already struggling to afford the latest cancer medicines.

Without additional sources of funding, such as compulsory insurance, the level of rationing in the NHS will sharply increase and advanced treatments will be available only to the most well-off, which is hardly in line with Cameron’s vision of a compassionate Conservatism. The party’s policy would keep the quality of the NHS below that of the mixed funding systems of France, Germany and Switzerland; it should reconsider.

Andrew Haldenby
Director Reform
London SW1

DINNER DATE: “Crunchy Cons”? What an apt phrase to describe Cameron’s Conservatives, whose fate is to be devoured by Gordon Brown at the next general election.

David Kenrick
Widnes, Cheshire