Medical waste
Sir: Susan Hill’s article (‘Patient, heal thyself’, 29 June) dealt only with the unnecessary visits to GPs for minor ailments. In Wales we have an extra incentive to waste GPs’ time — all prescriptions are free. There are many people who are prepared to make a GP appointment just to get routine medicines for free, and GPs are powerless to resist.
Tim Johnson
Aberystwyth, Ceredigion
Sir: Susan Hill’s article revived pleasant memories of my stint as a locum general practitioner in the early 1970s in Goring-by-Sea. As the registered patient number of the solo practice was the maximum allowable by the NHS at the time, I was puzzled to find that my workload ranged from half to one hour daily. The local pharmacist eventually explained that the prior principal had been a long-time cardiac invalid: local folk were reluctant to trouble the poor doctor and had got into the habit of going straight to Worthing Hospital Casualty. I spent most of my day absorbing local culture by having extended pub lunches and playing shove-ha’penny with the kids on Brighton pier. As 60 quid went into my bank account weekly, I readily admitted that socialised medicine was of great benefit to some.
Dr John Baffsky
Sydney, Australia
Better than Oxbridge
Sir: Charles Moore criticises the motivations of the 21 students out of the 64 who attended our Sutton Trust summer school programme who accepted places at leading US universities (The Spectator’s Notes, 29 June). This choice meant that nine of these students did not take up offers from Oxford and Cambridge.
The fact that the US universities will pay virtually all the fees and living expenses of the students, together with the breadth and depth of study on offer, were key factors in their decisions. That more than 250 universities in the US have total funds of £400 million a year for undergraduates from outside their own country who can’t afford the fees is to their credit.
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