A proper GP can be a pain in the wallet That said, it is possible in urban areas to be seen within hours. The trick is finding a doctor who knows less medicine than the average Basset hound. We have such a genius in the surgery near us. If you showed him an ingrowing toenail, he would refer you to a cardiologist. Complain about testicular pain, and he'd focus like a laser on an ovarian cyst. I would rather be treated by Dr Crippen. If a doctor is going to kill you, it feels less offensive if he or she intends it. Ask to see someone competent in that surgery, however, and the Khmer Rouge at the desk will bark something about Wednesday fortnight, which is why I put the finances under horrendous strain by plaguing a private GP. Those who cannot semi-afford that are increasingly forced to attend hospitals. This Jeremy Hunt sources to Labour's GP reforms of 2004, which he claims stuffed their mouths with gold and burdened them with time-wasting targets. Doctors were bribed to improve their handwriting skills, he asserts, and paid to inquire after cooking and gardening habits. Assuming a patient turned up with a colander sticking out of one orifice and a garden hoe from another, that makes perfect sense. While blaming previous administrations and overstretched professionals is hardly a novel ploy for a troubled minister, perhaps he has a point. The British Medical Association's outgoing chief accused him of "spouting rubbish," yet Mr Hunt is such a translucently pretty straight kinda guy that one is loath to doubt his analysis. The fact that the NHS improved sharply when Labour flooded it with money, and that sections of it such as A&E have palpably declined in the austerity years, must be a coincidence. Whether things will improve for the over-75s in April, when Mr Hunt says a "named GP" - rather than one of those Clint Eastwood-style GPs With No Name - will take "personal responsibility" for each elderly patient, time will tell. But the Today interview was not reassuring. Repeatedly invited by Sarah Montague to state that such a patient will be guaranteed same-day human contact with their bespoke doctor, the best he could do was "quite possibly." There is nothing like a cast-iron commitment, and that was nothing like a... The longer he waffled about the need to know where the buck stops with out-of-hospital care for the severely demented, the stronger the suspicion that this is one of those distant oases that will prove a mirage close up. Ultimately, said Mr Hunt, that buck stops with the Prime Minister. But after seven minutes of undiluted vagueness, Ms Montague would have been kinder to treat him like a confused ancient who has wandered into A&E after being given a GP's appointment in February 2015, and asked him if he knew the Prime Minister's name. As the gulf between health care in Germany and Albania suggests, it is hard cash rather than ministerial utopianism that determines quality. Until Mr Hunt spells out how much funding he needs, and where he will find it, my prescription is concentrated scepticism, taken three times daily with meals. Without the specifics, there is more chance of Spurs signing Messi, Mr Blair going to Carey Street and lashings of Famous Grouse being hailed as a hepatic cure-all than of a glorious comeback for the proper family doctor.