Twilight robbery
From Mr R.S. Squires Sir: I found `Middle-class welfare scroungers' (14 July) by Ross Clark extremely insulting and derogatory. In good faith I supplied him with full details of my dispute with the various health authorities and social services departments concerned with funding my late father's nursing care, having been led to understand that he was intending to write a full and balanced account of this matter, which has already received — and continues to receive — substantial media attention.
However, Mr Clark ignores the facts and chooses instead to brand me as a 'middleclass welfare scrounger'. The material which I supplied to him shows this to be completely false. Clearly his intention was to use my actions simply as a vehicle to promote his own jaundiced and prejudiced views. I particularly object to his phrase 'for the likes of Squires' and his implication that I have somehow gained advantage through discovery of 'a loophole in the law', thus placing me alongside the 'known criminal' who escapes justice on some legal technicality.
There is no 'legal loophole': the Appeal Court ruled in the 'Coughlan case' that all nursing-home patients are entitled to NHS funding where the need for healthcare is the primary reason for being in a nursing home, Like many Alzheimer's patients, my father required round-the-clock nursing.
Ross Clark contends, however, that all nursing-home patients who can afford it must pay for their care. But what about hospital patients receiving identical care? Would he discriminate against frail, sick and vulnerable patients simply because they reside in a nursing home? Or does he think that everybody who can afford it must pay? In other words, he would destroy the NHS.
I do not object per se to people paying for their nursing care, but either everybody pays — or nobody pays. It is the blatant discrimination and non-compliance with the law by health authorities and social services departments to which I object.
The Appeal Court ruled that patients requiring any more than 'identical or ancillary' care are the responsibility of the NHS. But through the application of unlawful and divisive 'eligibility criteria' health authorities and social services departments seek to circumvent the law, thus stripping thousands of elderly nursing home patients of the assets they have taken a lifetime to accumulate.
R. S. Squires
Bridestowe, Devon
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