Before writing "I feel very disturbed to see two doctors, who happen to be on the government benches no less, oppose such a measure as patient registration," in his letter The Need For Primary Healthcare Reform (February 23), Mark Bugeja could have cared to note that on The Sunday Times of December 27 I wrote: "The PN's electoral programme, to which I subscribe, fully reads: We need to focus on primary health in the community so that we can have an organised health system which can handle the individual needs of patients.

"We need to link doctors' clinics with health centres and Mater Dei hospital, by means of e-medicine. I also agree that as a consequence, for confidentiality and data protection purposes, patient registration with a GP or group practice would be mandatory."

Dr Bugeja would have never bothered stating "What their true agenda is we will probably never know but it seems that they either have missed something or know something we don't" had he read my letter to the editor of the Sunday Times on January 17 when I stated: "My political agenda is that the Nationalist Party's Christian Democrat legacy, admittedly Greek to most medics, MPs included, remains evident in its social policy. On the other hand, as a service provider, that my criticism regarding the primary health consultation document is shared by the overwhelming majority of solo general practitioners does not give anyone the right to take it out on me!"

Maybe Dr Bugeja could enlighten readers on whose behalf he is writing in the first person plural.

He is only in synch with all his colleagues in writing that "GPs should enjoy a better-managed system and build a strong rapport with their patients as true, traditional family doctors", discriminating against Dr Francis Agius MP and myself in stating: "Some people will not be registrable for one reason or another and I suggest to my two honourable colleagues to make it their social and professional calling to take charge of these individuals."

The Association of Private Family Doctors lobby that contributed exclusively to the consultative document recommended to its members to understand that while it was convenient for them to have health centres as stand-by when they are not available, they will lose their patients if health centres improve.

Clearly the PN government cannot continue to endorse such unsocial policy. As adamantly proposed by the government since March last year, pink and yellow card holders were only to be entitled to a limited number of free consultations while households even marginally above the "at risk of poverty line" of around €150 weekly income were to be totally excluded from the option of free GP service except for the occasional free "walk in" into the eventual still understaffed pseudo secondary care health centres.

I have recently explained to the PM that those who are finding it convenient to blame Mater Dei's shortcomings on primary care providers should stop passing the buck! Reading Emergency: Irish Hospitals in Chaos by Marie O'Connor should prove quite refreshing: Primary care is a mirage.

Of the planned primary care centres, only a quarter will be operational by 2011 and primary medical teams promised were denounced by leading GPs as virtual.

Even if these cyberspace teams had an earthly existence, moving care from hospitals to the community is a vast, untried experiment. Central to this is the shortage of acute public hospital beds."