THE LETTER by Ms Poyser regarding Lord Winton’s proposals for the health service certainly touched a nerve. Not that any doctor in his proposed future would dream of treating such an injury or indeed anything else for less than £200, before even referring the patient to a specialist. Who knows what the final bill would amount to or how a pensioner or unemployed person could hope to afford it. I am sure that no respectable practitioner would wish to hear a patient tell him, ‘I’m sorry I can’t come to see you next week, I simply can’t find the money’. Or perhaps I’m wrong and we are heading for a new dark age of holistic shamanism and hedge-wizardry.

Let’s get real. We have been spending a hefty portion of our hard-earned wages for most of our lives on national health insurance in the hope that we are covered for whatever might befall. How have we been so misled and by whom? Is Aneurin Bevan at this moment climbing from his grave in protest?

Not that it would do him much good of course. He would hardly recognise the health service management ethos of today. Treatment according to the ability to pay was never one of his principles, and should never, ever be one of ours.

Julian R Powell, Malpas, Newport