Hospital parking charges - morally wrong
by Matthew Salter
Currently in England if you visit a
friend or loved one in hospital or you need to go yourself for
treatment, then you have to pay for the privilege of using an NHS
hospital car park. It has been proven by the Department of Health
that several hospitals in the country have made over one million
pounds from their car parks alone.
Hospitals will say that the income from
their car parks will pay for improvements such as external
lighting, walkways, cycle racks, security and improved car park and
travel facilities and I do not doubt that this is true. They have
to find a way to fund themselves. I find this current means of
raising money morally wrong.
Some hospitals are charging £4 an hour for
car park use, this is blatantly exploiting the sick and injured who
have to visit hospitals. Being a former cancer patient myself I
would visit hospitals regularly for operations, tests/scans/x-rays
and also treatment, according to the Macmillan Cancer Support
charity on average a cancer patient will make at least 60 trips to
hospitals from diagnosis to treatment.
Being in my early teens I did not have to
pay for all of the car parking charges, I couldn’t even drive then,
but my parents did. Sometimes I was in hospital for several weeks
and my parents and other friends and family would have to pay
inflated amounts for the parking just to visit me. It would get me
thinking about the situations of others, while receiving treatment
like me and having to pay for their car parking while struggling to
have enough money to support themselves or their family. It just
seems wrong, particularly in these financially difficult times.
We in Britain pride ourselves with the fact
that we have a free health service. That we, unlike other
countries, such as America, do not make money out of the sick and
injured. We don’t tax the sick. But it seems to me that with paying
for the use of hospital car parks the NHS is definitely taxing the
sick and the most vulnerable. I hope that in the not too distance
future our government can sort this problem out. I know it will
affect hospitals’ income but I don’t have a ready-made solution to
this, I just know what is currently being done is wrong.