A former NHS boss has called for hospital patients to be charged £8 a day during their stay and for the end of free prescriptions for the over-60s. Professor Stephen Smith, the former chairman of the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust, says that the money raised would help to pay for expensive medical equipment.
His ideas, set out in a new book, are modelled on the German system where patients are charged €10 (£8.50) a night, and he suggests patients should pay between £4 and £8 up to a maximum of 28 days a year. Professor Smith told the Daily Mail: "I think the public would be prepared to pay some additional charges.
"Means testing would ensure the poor were not affected unfairly." However, he was accused of promoting ‘hare-brained ideas’ and ‘zombie policies’ by Dr John Puntis, the co-chairman of campaign group Keep Our NHS Public.
He said: "Charging people to cover part of the cost of a hospital stay would be a fundamental departure from the founding principles of the NHS and show that the long-standing consensus on a tax-funded public service model of healthcare has been truly abandoned."
A record 6.6million people are waiting for routine NHS treatment, figures show, and Tory leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak has vowed to make cutting NHS waiting lists his number one public service priority should he become the next prime minister. Mr Sunak has pledged to eliminate one-year NHS waiting times by September 2024 – six months earlier than planned – and to get overall numbers stable by next year.
Leadership favourite Liz Truss has promised to appoint a ‘strong’ health secretary if she wins the keys to No 10 and said a prosperous economy will be needed to tackle the backlog.
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