• WHAT price the future of our health service?

I suffer with COPD, chronic obstruction pulmonary disorder. I have immense difficulty breathing. I have been in the Whittington NHS hospital twice over the past 18 months on both occasions for three weeks, at a cost of £400 a day; a fact I do not take for granted.

The NHS has saved my life many times and allowed me to live fully for most of my 62 years that were dominated by asthma, and now COPD.

What has helped me most is a blue reliever inhaler with salbutamol. One small inhaler costs the NHS £2, a large one £4.99. I would have been dead without it long ago.

A year ago a mate of mine with his British-born son in Florida USA asked my advice on how to buy them here. I spoke with my community respiratory matron and she said it could be bought online.
I then asked why? His son has health insurance and one inhaler costs him $150, if he was uninsured $250 each. I was gobsmacked.

Overall 66 per cent of all bankruptcies in the USA are because of health bills and 44 million have no health insurance – an American method of healthcare the Tories deny but want to export here.

What I’m about to reveal to you might shock, or you may already know; A study by Oxford academics ​shows there is statistically a “significant” relationship between donations to parties and nominations for peerages – one in five of the coalition MPs had links with private firms who could and have profited from government NHS reforms.

David Cameron, former health secretary Andrew Lansley and Jeremy Hunt are among 64 Tory MPs named – £1.5 billion, that’s £1 in every £8 we taxpayers fund the NHS, has left our NHS and gone into the pockets of just 15 private companies linked to 23 Tory MPs and Lords, who were all able to vote for the Health and Social Care Act of 2012; and 113 members of House of Lords are paid by financial services firms, 26 by resources firms and 20 by foreign governments.

You do the “math”. If it does not matter to you or you don’t care, vote Tory. If it does don’t vote Tory.

PATRICK EDLIN
Address supplied