http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healt ... arges.html


Which means that because their funding has been hit hard they will actually increase charges.

That really sucks. While I generally applaud anything that puts bums on public transport, hospital can be traumatic enough without having to pay hundreds of pounds in parking to visit your loved ones.

I can't help thinking the government could profit by building multi-story car parks on existing hospital single-story car parks. The general public would have to pay, but patients and visitors would be given a free token or similar. There is never enough parking, so why not expand and profit?

I would think that there might be planning objections and then where do they find the money to do it? It could have a slow payback approaching a decade. That would mean that they have to front the money for a few years before they have made any returns. A right now while it makes sense long term this government are not thinking long term at all.

Visiting? It's annoying paying to visit a sick person in hospital but I can just about swallow that. On the other hand though I had to take my baby to A&E and pay £5 for the sodding parking. It was also the crack of dawn on a Sunday so I had to go to a cash machine, then find a shop that opens that early to get change for the pay and display. It's then a five minute walk from the car park to the department as they've knocked down the multi-storey.

Yes but hospitals looked at this as a great way of generarating additional funds. With GPs now ging to get more funds when they scrap Primary Care Trusts they will not have a guaranteed income so this will be possibly their biggest secure source of funds.