""whatever anyone else might have contributed to the thread, that is not what I personally am talking about - or interested in,""

OK, so dealing with your personal interest, are you one of the benighted and ill informed who have not yet heard of two clinical states which pertain to drunken behaviour, namely "Alcohol Dependency" and "Alcoholism">

These are not euphemisms for binge happy hedonism. They are in fact very unhappy states, difficult for the sufferer to deal with.

How do you propose that A&E staff diagnose youthful (or for that matter middle aged) self inflicted excess, as opposed to involuntary acoholism, or dependency?

The payment that insurance companies make toward emergency treatment of road traffic accidents is totally irrelevant to this topic, since it is always paid in the first instance, not by the patient but by the person causing the injury, whether or no that person is culpable.

Having removed your only example of payment, we are left with a system which is unequivocally opposed to payment for treatment at the point of need.

It is the same (and rightly so) for every UK citizen from the highest to the lowest.

Any relaxation of that system opens the door to a flood of changes which would do, in the fullness of time, exactly what you and others accuse the government of doing.

Start with drunks, and somebody will ask "Why not smokers, fat people, criminals, gang members, drug dealers etc. etc"...........and in the long run "Why not everybody"?   These things never stop after the first move

Thank you Mike, but no thanks. I don't want any part of dismantling the Welfare State.

Don T.