Sir, - Much of your coverage of healthcare highlights the issue of "public versus private". I would have thought that, from a purely pragmatic point of view, the more patients are treated privately, the less the burden on the overloaded public system. Surely this must be a good thing, devoutly to be wished.
To those who insist on making it a moral issue, I would say it seems to me quite immoral for those who can afford to pay for healthcare to get it free. For comfortably-off people to clog up the over-burdened GMS when they could well afford to pay for private treatment seems to me quite wrong. - Yours, etc.,
Dr Norman Stewart, Seapark, Malahide, Co Dublin.