privately from their savings for operations to escape NHS waiting lists is testimony not ness of private medicine. Still only one person in eight has any prithrough workplace schemes. Those least likely to be able to afford insurance are the oia and chroni sick who are most likely to need costly treatment The boss of Western Provident, one of the key private insurers, recently admitted that soaring private premiums - rising by as muchas 60%6 this year - are driving even more people away. Private medicine without insurance is ruinously expensive - as 160,000 know to their cost. . The tax-funded NHS is stil the best - and chespest - way of sharine nisk spending was set to replicate the levels of increase achieved under the Tories.
Health workers have also had to endure a winter crisis in which neither weather nor the largely routine level of flu and viruses were sufficient to explain away the dire shortage of beds to treat emergency medical admissions. day. The Daily Mail, the Times and Telegraph predictably used case for increased reliance of privale medical insurance -taken up by the hapless William Hague even as his party's health *value private cover represents More period - at a cost of £500m a year.
• It called for an extra C500m a year to be spent on mental health services, along with £500m in mild capital over 2-3 years to set up accommodation for people with long-term severe mental iliness.
• It urged the NES to resume responsibility for the care of frail elderly patients currently paying their own fees as a result of the "community care reforms" - 3 polley largelsi echoed by the Royal Commission on care of the elderly. This would cost Dillion a year, although these costs could reduced in time it the NHS stopped closing down its beds for he ciderly and instead began to them and their colleagues community health Trusts, especially now that the government has pur GPs and primary care "in Carving scat of the New NHS".
Now, according to Blair's stateSociaine Secretary Alan Milburn -NHS must answer "five chal• The "partnership challenge", system- hospitals, primary care groups, social services and com- to work together to the right level of beds and services The "performance challenge", to ensure that, "using incentives and inspection, all trusts and primary
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