ON MP Neil Carmichael’s opposition to the proposed overnight closure of Stroud’s Minor Injuries Unit.

Posted by Spider lane: MP Neil Carmichael, if you believe fully in the NHS and its values, free at the point of use, then why are you voting with your Conservative party to privatise it? It is because of YOUR policies that Stroud’s overnight Minor Injuries Unit is forced to close.

On the letter about the future of the NHS.

Posted by robertpaterson3: We all want to have a fully functioning NHS that serves us all properly. So why does nobody acknowledge that it is being run badly? Why should fat people make other taxpayers pay for their inability to stop stuffing themselves with the wrong kind of food? Why should drug users or alcoholics get ‘free’ access to the NHS? Nobody makes them use drugs or alcohol to slowly kill themselves. Why do we provide ‘free’ medical services to foreigners? The Australians or Americans don’t. Why are we so collectively stupid? We are destroying our own NHS by exposing it to demands it was never set up for. It is not a ‘free’ service and never will be. Taxpayers have to pay for it so why not admit it? And if you are reckless with your own life why should other people pick up the bill?

Posted by Bill_Ellson: Lord Prior of Brampton, a former chairman of the Care Quality Commission, did not launch “an enquiry (sic) into starting NHS charges and payments through private insurance and charges, not through taxation.” or anything remotely like it. The issue is: what will the long-term demand for healthcare be in this country in 10 or 20 years’ time? Will we have the economic growth to fund it?” which is a very different to what Ms Hicks asserts. Lord Prior also said: “Every healthcare system in the developed world is facing almost exactly the same issues of sustainability that have been posed in the debate today. Most extreme is probably the United States of America, where healthcare accounts for over 16 per cent of GNP. I worked in America for some time in the 1970s and I saw the cost of healthcare, which was largely loaded on to employers, literally destroy large parts of the steel and car industries. We may wish to explore alternative charging systems or different funding systems but just moving the cost away from the state to insurance has not actually solved very many problems.”