Letter: Hunters are not Vandals

KENNETH Tuson asserts that we shall not be able to afford a health service funded by the state in the 21st century. Mysteriously, however, we shall be able to afford it if we have a system of compulsory health insurance, which will "return responsibility for funding to the individual".

What is the NHS but a system of compulsory insurance? Who pays for it except the individual? The only real change which his system implies is that everyone would pay the same, thus transferring the burden from the rich to the poor: this thinking is the same as that which led to the disaster of the poll tax.

D J Bell

Ware, Hertfordshire