Health Services

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31991, 19 May 1969, Page 12

Health Services

Sir, —“Widow” must have looked prosperous and respectable to get red-carpet treatment at the Social Security Department. Unfortunates whom I have taken there get papers bunged at them and little else, and I have seen invalids and unemployed waiting round in cold corridors for hours, week after week. When on pharmaceutical and medical benefit work at the Health' Department, I seemed to be the ultimate road-block on a well-established route for unsympathetic buck-pass-ing when any beneficiary was foolish enough to mention the word “health” at the Social Security Department. To sneer at equal treatment for all, “Widow” quotes a comic television character. I hope she could “Get Smart" enough this Sunday to listen to Sam Pollock, when, on the subject of social security, he said there was one thing all parties in Britain are agreed on: there should be no “pricetag” on health services.— Yours, etc., VARIAN J. WILSON. May 18, 1969.

Sir, —No-one should heed Varian J. Wilson’s fearful warning of a recruitment of inspectors regarding the concessions for pensioners and universal superannuitants. A patient’s age is elementary information on his case card and easily checked. There could be the odd moron claiming he is ap old-age pensioner when he is not; offset perhaps by the odd woman discounting her age. It is surely time everyone realised that the 7j per cent social security tax never escaped the cancerous proliferation of inflation. A wage increase appears to gain more in tax for social security. However, from the moment of increase, the cancer of inflation increases, reducing the value of the extra amount obtained in tax. No government has the courage to raise the 7) per cent and so, perhaps, lower spending on such poisons as alcohol, aspirins, cigarettes, and the rotting fears of not possessing the consumer goods some advertisers insist we must be afraid of not possessing and consuming.—Yours, etc., A. B. CEDARIAN. May 16, 1969.