IN response to the letter by Dave James in the Times recently, there are three key aims of the 38 Degrees 'Save the NHS' petitions.   Firstly, to stop privatisation.  Private companies will buy up profitable parts of the NHS and when no more profit is to be made, pull out, as has happened with Hinchinbrook Hospital.  Who will step in then to save the service — the tax payer?  This will of course not include the company itself, as we know the government is averse to making large private companies pay tax. The second aim of the petition is to stop the underfunding of the NHS. Perhaps ensuring companies like Serco pay their taxes could help with this.   With regards to your comment that workers are 'bleeding the NHS dry', you might like to consider a third of staff do not get enough pay to live on, so asking for a 1% pay rise seems acceptable to me.  I have not heard that the staff of Virgin and Serco will be going on strike but this is perhaps because the government is happy for the NHS to pay their companies enough to provide them with a living wage. Thirdly, the aim is to keep the NHS out of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).   TTIP removes legal restrictions to allow private companies to make more money.  This means companies from the EU and USA can buy parts of the NHS and will not be subject to controls by our government, such as limits on the cost of the care and minimum standards of care.  This sounds like licence to make money from people at their most vulnerable. We do not need to include in our petition the need for drug companies to provide a cost breakdown as this information is already available.  They are part of the 'free market' and the NHS has to pay what they ask; no matter how much research funded by the NHS contributed to the development of the drugs they produce. Perhaps you would like to start a petition to get the government to give the NHS more power in their negotiation around the cost of drugs.    The Labour, Conservative and Coalition governments have let us down by not taking care of the NHS. If we sell off this national service we will become customers to exploit, not people to invest care in. You are right — I think this is morally wrong. Catherine Hughes NHS Nurse Tavistock