Letter to my GP: Dear Sirs, I’ve no idea to whom I should address this as the text message I’ve received simply says, “The GP”.  How impersonal.  I therefore have no choice but to leave this, similarly, impersonal.   The text message I received this morning refers to a request made, two weeks ago, for a simple one page declaration to be completed, so that I may relieve the NHS of the burden of treatment for my rare, terminal leukaemia.   Two weeks later, I am told that for the privilege of relieving that burden, both financially and from a resource perspective, you wish to charge me £160.  I call that blackmail, I call if graft, I call it despicable, nothing less.   For fifty years I have paid an enormous sum of money (having been a high earner) in National Insurance contributions and taxes, which includes keeping you all in the style to which you are accustomed.  For forty of those years, I have done all in my power to avoid ever using your services – unfortunately, the system is designed to make that impossible, completely.  For that same period I have also paid private healthcare insurance.   I have dealt with my own lung cancer-induced lobectomy, my cholecystectomy, my Gamma Knife treatment for a brain metastasis, everything.  Tens of thousands of pounds, some paid by me, some by insurers.  When I got sick with Covid in March 2020, I rang the surgery just to confirm my symptoms and some indication that I was doing all the right things.  I was greeted by an answerphone message that basically said, “Don’t you know there’s a pandemic on, sod off and leave us alone”.  This, despite the fact that you had informed some minion at Surrey County Council that I was “Extremely Clinically Vulnerable”.  Well, no problem, I looked after myself, called a private GP who basically confirmed I was doing all the right things and am now immune to the Chinese Flu.  Sorry, I know I deprived you of a vaccination fee or five but I’m fine, thank you for asking.   For three years, your staff sat on multiple blood test results demonstrating my CMML, each one flagged by the laboratory for observation.  That for a condition with a median life-expectancy of 15-20 months.  Utter negligence, at best. Yes, in August 2020, I also organised and paid for my CMML diagnosis because you’d closed and bolted the barricades.   I am one of your cheapest patients, keeping myself alive and on your list so you can continue to draw the annual stipend.  In any other business, in any organisation where someone gave a darn, you’d have patted me on the back, thanked me profusely for relieving you of the chore of caring for me and signed the ruddy form, same day!  One hundred and sixty quid?! Are you kidding?  That’s roughly what you get paid each year for having me on your list.   The one person that I personally have encountered, who made any effort on my behalf was Kate Fitzgerald – I only remember two phone calls from your practice in the last forty years, one was to inform me I had lung cancer, at six o’clock one Friday evening – lovely timing.  The second was from Kate Fitzgerald a couple of weeks ago because she HAD actually checked my blood results and reacted to what they revealed.  Good on her!   As it transpired, her urgent interventions on my behalf resulted in four cancelled appointments with E.S.Hospital for a bone marrow aspiration and me giving up and paying £6,950 to a London Hospital in desperation and frustration – not that this was your fault.  I salute her and that’s why I addressed my letter to her but, for some reason, despite her being the only person familiar with my case, she was obliged to pass on the request “for costing” and thus, two full weeks later, here we are.   1/2