John Cassar White’s description (September 8) of our public health service as being “free at point of delivery” sounds great but is an overstatement. When patients have to buy very expensive drugs recommended for their serious disease but which are unavailable on the public health or have to pay privately for expensive scans because their condition does not permit a few months’ wait for their Mater Dei Hospital appointment, it is then obvious that the public health is not really a timely, free at point of delivery service for all.

Mind you, if it were timely, comprehensive and free, there would be little scope for private medicine, would there?

This is not to say that people are unaware of the huge workload pressure and budgetary constraints the whole Mater Dei establishment is under. However, the fact that some very expensive latest drugs, recommended for serious disease, are unavailable on the public health service is worrying because there is no modern medicine without these therapeutic advances. This being available only to those who can afford is, of course, no advert for the public health.

Cassar White goes on about public health funding difficulties in some other countries, mentioning France in passing.

National insurance in France is more than 20 per cent of all salary (not 10 per cent of first €20,000 income as in Malta) and practically all advanced countries have annual taxes of one form or another on land and/or property values.

In comparison, the Maltese government hasn’t got the same level of income to sustain our welfare state. In fact, these last 30 years it has been stealing part of the contributory two-thirds pension of several thousand pensioners.

In the meantime, we can shed a lot of crocodile tears about the rising numbers of the poor in Malta.