YP Letters: Immigrants ruined the NHS, not the elderly

How should St James's Hospital in Leeds plan for an ageing society?

WHAT was the point of the recent article in The Yorkshire Post by Chris Snowdon of the Institute of Economic Affairs?

His employer’s regular output of blaming the financial difficulties of the NHS on the over-65’s, always ignores the following fact that up to and including the current generation of UK-born pensioners, we have, generally, paid 40 to 50 years’ Income Tax and National Insurance contributions, as well as other taxes.

Yet, according to him, we are the “burden” on the NHS, with no mention of the people who have come from all over the world and have never paid a penny into the system, but are entitled to use the NHS on equal terms to us.

He also used the age of 18 as the starting age for full-time work (40 hours a week, at least), for calculating contributions, whereas I, like many of my generation started working 48 hours per week at 14.

So far as comparing  healthy and unhealthy lifestyles goes, it isn’t the  cost of the moment of  death that is different, it is the cost of the healthcare, possibly over a period of years, plus the loss of earnings and tax revenues that costs society money, if death is premature because of lifestyle.