So BBC Wales news have been championing the idea of NHS patients going abroad in order to get round long waiting lists.

You can be treated in Bucharest, Croatia or maybe Slovakia.

But few people are taking the opportunity to do so. What a surprise.

Could that be because it is a stupid idea?

Even with a car it is difficult enough to get to Carmarthen, or Morriston.

Leaving Glangwili Hospital in the middle of the night after travelling with my mum in an ambulance the receptionist could not even provide a number for a taxi.

Will you get a lot of visitors in Tblisi? Certainly not if, like us, they restrict visitors to an hour a night.

By the time you get home you will have already missed a few evenings.

The answer, of course, is to cut the queues in local hospitals.

And the best way to do that is to provide enough staff to deal with them.

We are told many lies about hospitals being in debt, but that, of course is impossible. Hospitals are not responsible for their debts - the Government is.

If they are short of cash then they must cut back on unnecessaries - like allowances for politicians or lending our bombs and aircraft to the Americans free of charge. Because money is no object when it comes to our health.

And that should be looked after locally - not in Carmarthen, or London, or on the other side of the world.

No doubt it would be cheaper to have one world hospital in, say, Sydney. But that is crackpot.