DOCTORS and nurses do a great job and recent instances of patients being refused beds in their locality must be an undeserved burden on them.

This situation, however, can only worsen as the whole fabric of the NHS is further weakened.

This all started some time ago when a businessman recovering in hospital wished to pay extra for a private room with phone. Our local MP was against it - the politics of envy.

This was the start of the health service's decline and now all the real money is going into private medicine.

What we need is a truly National Health Service - open to anyone, with all the money going into making our medical care the best in the world.

If patients wished to pay a surcharge for certain personal or private extras, fair enough.

What sensible, fair-minded people want is access to the best medical treatment in the quickest possible way.

Politicians - Conservative, Labour and Liberal - should for once get together and put an end to this hypocritical "market trading" in health care and unite for the benefit of us all.

They should introduce a one and only "National Health Service," then people could say that MPs have risen above the cut and thrust of party politics and become statesmen.

LEN RUSHTON, Bowland House, Larkhill, Blackburn.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.