Stand the heat, get into the kitchen.
J DurrantLondon NW2Today’s TV chefs are an anomaly. Here is a recipe for recreational cooking: take a cookbook, find the recipe you want, note down the ingredients, go to the shops and buy what you need, return to your kitchen and cook what you have bought, serve on a plate, eat. How sad do you have to be to want to consume TV cookery programmes? If ever there was evidence that we are a nation of watchers rather than doers then it is the news that we are to have more cookery programmes rammed down our throats. As I am under 40, friends tell me this is a better way of spending my money. I hope a government is courageous enough to address the financing of the NHS and what to do when there is a financial shortfall.What do you think?Every Monday you can give the Do We Need…? subject of the week the come-on-down or the thumbs-down.
Send your verdict, in no more than 100 words, to Do We Need…?, Section Two, the Independent, 1 Canada Square, Canary Wharf, London E14 5DL or fax 0171-293 2182 no later than Friday morning.. I don’t need “hotel-type rooms and visiting hours to suit the family”. I need to know that the health service is fit and healthy.Meanwhile, I plan to save the money that would have gone into private health insurance into a PEP in case I ever need to buy some private service. But we do need more, yes more, investment in the NHS or else we need to accept an open approach to rationing. And, if we can’t accept rationing, then we will have to accept tax increases to fund the extra pounds 6bn that the British Medical Association demanded at its annual meeting. As I was considering spending up to pounds 1,500 per year on an insurance scheme, I would have to say that I would be willing to pay more taxes for a consistently reliable health service. It is not that I am opposed to the principle of private health cover, rather that I do not feel that consumers are always going to get a fair deal, particularly those who have been paying their premiums for many years.So do we need private health insurance? No.
My sister, for example, thought she was fully covered when she had to have an emergency Caesarean section. Her health insurance company, however, would not fully cover her anaesthetist’s bill, saying he had charged too much and that they would have been able to tell her that, had she phoned them on the 24-hour helpline.The debate over whether to pay for health care differs from the other great debate in this country, whether to pay for education. With private schooling, you are virtually (except for those schools with charity status) leaving the state system. With private health care, you are occasionally buying an upgrade from the NHS economy class, safe in the knowledge that you have the NHS safety net to fall back on.It appears to me that health insurance companies can pick, choose and dump policy-holders because they have the NHS to fall back on. After an operation, private health insurance pays for private rooms with telephones and televisions and extended visiting hours. There are many different types of policies offering varying levels of cover. Some policies insist you choose from a limited number of hospitals throughout the country and some, for example, give a free medical each year.But I find that I am uncomfortable with the idea of private health insurance in this country I do not trust the health insurance companies to deliver Friends report problems with claims.
