Insurance and the Private Patient
Sin,—The article entitled The Private Patient which appeared in a recent issue of the Spectator is most timely. Disillusionment with the hospital benefits provided under the National Health Service is undoubtedly spreading after two years' practical experience of the actual service. People who had hoped for relief from the unpredictable expenses of serious illness have come to realise that the attention they want will often be obtainable only if they seek private treatment outside the Service, Such being the mood, it is well that the complex financial implications should be explained,-so that provision can be made against so heavy a liability while there is yet time. Being intimately connected with the largest of the provident associations to which your article refers, I Meet so often the heart-rending cry: "If only we had known of your association before this happened."
What has happened is that the National Health Service has provided the option of private treatment, and has then, both by its regulations and by refusing private patients aid from their compulsory health insurance, proceeded to put private treatment outside the reasonable reach of the great majority of the populace. My association, and one or two others like it, are attempting to fill the gap by making it possible for anyone wilo wishes to be treated privately to afford the cost. And in doing this we are sure we are helping to preserve the facilities for private practice, for without an adequate "insured population" there is a real danger of nursing-honies and hospital pay-beds being closed, not because, they are unwanted, which is certainly not the case, but because people simply would not be able to Word treatment privately.—Yours faithfully,
Provident House, 61 Bartholomew Close, E.C.I.
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