Nostalgia is playing an important part in influencing the efforts of the Coalition as it attempts to assuage the demands exerted on it by the economic situation and its desire to establish what it calls the Big Society.

GPs, we are told, will become responsible for buying in-patient care and thus become the arbiters of what is considered to be value for money as far as that service is concerned.

Financial control will no longer be in the hands of mere bureaucrats, as it is at present.

What this means is patients will, once again have to trust to the charitable inclinations of their doctors as in the past.

In pre-Welfare State days, the ability of patients to be able to pay their medical fees was an important consideration before one’s doctor’s services were invoked.

Many were sympathetic men who waived all or part of his dues out of consideration of a patient’s economic status.

Under the new reform, while not expecting direct payment from his clients, it would seem the GP of the future will be able to say just how much or little may be spent on making a person well again.

John Bathurst
Mellow Purgess Close
Basildon