Unnecessary hospital invoices

I read with consternation the reported proposed measure by the government to issue all patients discharged from Mater Dei hospital with a billing invoice to seemingly provide the patient with an itemised breakdown of the costs incurred to the taxpayer during their stay and any treatment afforded at that time. This proposed launching of a seeming cost-awareness exercise is somehow countenanced on the grounds that patients apparently need to be made more cognizant of the costs associated with their stay in a NHS hospital.

This begs the question what purpose, or on what justifiable rationale, would the issuance of such a gratuitous billing invoice possible serve, or is this merely a precursor signalling the government's future intentions in actually charging patients for their stay and any treatment while in Mater Dei hospital? For surely it is predominantly, if not virtually the vast majority of all patients, Maltese taxpayers who occupy the beds in Mater Dei and who therefore have already contributed to the costs incurred that their stay necessitated.

Furthermore, is it not these very same people who contributed to the construction of the hospital through their tax obligations in the first instance?

Also what would the cost be to the taxpayer to formulate and issue such an illogical invoice containing a full breakdown of costs incurred - mostly to that individual taxpayer directly - during their stay in hospital?

I would argue that any taxpayer requiring a stay in a publically funded hospital has merely made a claim against the insurance policy they have contributed too via compulsory National Insurance deductions from their hard earned wages, which surely is paid to the government to make the provision for such a potential health treatment protection scenario to avail themselves of should the need arise, or am I being subjunctive?

Also it is somewhat incongruous for the Health Parliamentary Secretary, Joe Cassar, to state that "People have to understand that health services were not actually 'free' but paid for by the taxpayer". Surely this is the very same people, i.e the taxpayers, who, by and large, are actually utilising these health services and are therefore self-funding in no small measure such services, and merely calling in their insurance policy to pay out when so constrained?

I venture to suggest that the taxpayer does not need nor want to be saddled with further unnecessary financial burdens that the issuance of such unnecessary invoices would undoubtedly generate and the absurd notion should be confined to the "ridiculous idea" file and remain there undisturbed.