NHS charges by the back door.
On New Year's Day I made phone calls to Zimbabwe. Using 18185 the call was 3p a minute. A friend, who I met in Zimbabwe in July, is in hospital in Kent. It cost 39p a minute, a premium rate that call providers won't touch. There have been a number of comments about parking charges, but hospitals make considerable charges for patients to watch television too. This means, of course, that those who depend on the NHS, people with limited income, have to pay considerable sums both as patients, and as relatives and friends. The National Health Service is supposed to be provided to us at no further cost after funding by taxation. These are charges by the backdoor and undermine principles under which the Health Service was set up.
My friend is in the U.K. for an operation on his spine and suffers from arthritis. He accompanies us on a train journey from Bulawayo in Zimbabwe to Francistown in Botswana. Getting on and off was no problem in Bulawayo, but elsewhere, including Francistown, it was rather a different matter since there are no platforms. It posed something of a problem for most of us until we got the knack!
Posted by John Tyrrell at January 2, 2007 7:33 PM
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