WHEN the NHS was born, exactly sixty years ago today, the aim was that it would provide free treatment “from cradle to grave.”

An awful lot has changed since then.

And the NHS is creaking under the enormous economic pressure of providing such a service in a world of hugely- expensive drugs and sophisticated equipment and an increasingly ageing population.

The comprehensive nature of the service still means the mass of people get a better health deal than their counterparts in many so-called prosperous nations.

But all is not rosy. Just look at Annmarie Whittaker. Faced with constant pain her family had scraped together to pay privately for three months of pain relieving treatment while she was in the queue on an NHS waiting list which would have provided her with a course of pain-killing injections in October.

Now she has been told that because she had opted for private treatment, she will have to go back to her GP, get another hospital referral and in effect go to the back of the queue again.

MP Jack Straw is taking her case to the minister who has to intervene. This national policy is outrageous and would make the NHS’s founders turn in their graves.