Your article (It's not too late to save the NHS from the barbarians, 25 January) is simply inaccurate. Claims that we aim to privatise the NHS amount to nothing more than scaremongering. We have made it crystal clear, time and again, that we will never, ever privatise the NHS.
Contrary to what you have written, the bill would not require private provision of NHS services, nor does it open the way for privatisation of NHS funding. In fact, the bill would enshrine the fundamental principle that the NHS will continue to be a universal health service funded from general taxation. Monitor, as sector regulator, will regulate all providers to protect and promote patients' interests, and GPs will decide when, where and if to use competition.
What matters to patients is not who delivers their care, but the quality of the care they receive, the dignity and respect they receive along the way and that it is free at the point of use. Our plans to modernise the NHS will allow a wider range of providers to offer services to patients, including clinicians, put the NHS on a sustainable footing for the future, hand power to doctors and nurses, and reduce needless bureaucracy.
Simon Burns MP
Health minister
• Seumas Milne claims the health and social care bill will "turn the NHS into a market-based free-for-all". This simply is not the case. The bill includes a provision specifically prohibiting a significant increase of the use of private and independent sector companies as a deliberate government policy.
Independent healthcare organisations currently provide just 5% of all mainstream NHS clinical services and any increase in providing services will be determined by competitive tendering processes and the cautious, managed introduction of the any qualified provider (AQP) policy. So in reality there is no possibility of any kind of "market takeover" of NHS activity by private providers.
The key point is that the bill puts clinicians largely in charge of commissioning, the introduction of AQP and of competitive tendering on behalf of the taxpayer. The aim is to allow clinicians to decide, in conjunction with patients, which providers will offer the best quality and best value services. It is very hard to understand why there should be objections to any of that.
David Worskett
Director, NHS Partners Network
• Thank you to Dr Alex Scott-Samuel for setting out a straightforward account of what will happen to the NHS if the health and social care bill becomes law. (Where the NHS is heading, 21 January). What is being planned will fundamentally change the NHS from a relatively equitable service to a two- or three-tier one with a much reduced and poorer service for the less well-off. At the same time private companies will profit as our taxes flow into the bank accounts of shareholders rather than going towards promoting health and providing care.
The coalition is acting without any mandate from the electorate because it knows it would face opposition from the public if they understood what the effects of this "reform" will be. And there is no use hoping a future Labour government will reverse the bill – Labour's NHS reforms laid the foundations which the coalition is now building on, and in any case once the healthcare market is opened up, European competition rules will make it impossible to go back. So all of us who care about the NHS need to start petitioning to try at this 11th hour to stop this bill becoming law.
Judy White
Bradford, West Yorkshire
• Your paper reported two examples of possible bankruptcy caused by the costs of healthcare in the US: the family of the skier Sarah Burke having to fundraise $550,000 hospital costs (Report, 21 January) and Etta James's family's request to release $500,000 for her medical costs (Report, 21 January). Families not only have to grieve for their loved ones but also have the worry of finding huge medical costs, even if they do have medical insurance. One of the great functions of the NHS is that it removes fear, fear of the worry of how to cope with one's own illness or illness in the family whenever and wherever it may strike. That's why this bill must be defeated.
Dr Jack Czauderna
Sheffield
• Seumas Milne's article made excellent, but very disturbing reading; surely the Liberal Democrats cannot risk allowing this bill to proceed any further.
The Liberal Democrat party did not support this proposal whilst campaigning in the last election and it would not be too strong to suggest that such proposals (that include allowance for 49% private work) were considered an anathema to Liberal traditions and to us supporters; yet the party seemingly intends to vote it through. Everyone understands that the Liberal Democrats have entered into a coalition and that this demands loyalty. When, however, that means that proposed changes are considered by all of the associated professions to inevitably lead to the NHS becoming unrecognisable, it is surely time for the party to say that enough is enough. The very fact that there is this opposition gives the Lib Dems the very sound reason, in this instance, for removing their support and voting against the bill. If they allow the party to vote for this terrible bill; the country will never forgive them.
T Watts
Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands
• Two things you can do right now in response to Seumas Milne's clarion call to "save the NHS from the barbarians". First, sign the Drop the NHS bill epetition (go to epetitions.direct.gov.uk), which already has 37,000 of the 100,000 signatures needed to force the government to look at it. Second, download and read the new seven-page frequently asked questions about the bill, produced by four senior doctors, including Clare Gerada of the Royal College of GPs (go to the website of health professionals4nhs.co.uk). Tell everybody you know about these.
If you have time, write to your MP, especially if a Lib Dem. The bill will go back to the Commons before long. Labour oppose it. If the Lib Dems vote against it, it will fall. Only four did so at the third reading, before the bill went to the Lords, and this must rise if the bill is to be defeated. The louder the opposition, the more likely that enough will have a change of heart. Now is the time to make your views known in no uncertain terms.
Jeanne Warren
Oxford