Letter: The NHS 'is grinding to a halt'

Sir: It may be true that disaffected Tory voters are hostile to the NHS being run as a business (report, 14 September); however it is unlikely, as you suggest, that we will hear any less of 'markets', 'competition' and 'choice in health' before the next election.

Today's NHS management is based on the bogus science of health economics, which purports to offer health solutions by measuring health and related activities.

Ministers have swallowed this simplistic health economics wholesale; the result is a swollen bureaucracy and a system grinding to a halt.

Meanwhile,as the NHS is wrecked from within, taxpayers are forced to pay for the salaries and ministerial cars of a secretary of state and three health ministers whose only apparent function is to give press conferences. Presumably, this is what is meant by the minimalist state.

Yours sincerely,

BARRY WADESON

Milton Keynes

14 September