Your article (NHS chief in grilling over pay deals, 19 March) perpetuates the myth that crude productivity statistics are the only way to measure the value of hospital consultants. In fact, they reveal nothing about the quality of patient care. Doctors do not treat patients like factories churning out widgets, and patients do not want to feel like they are being pushed through a machine. When we look at indicators that measure quality, we see improvements such as reductions in cancer-mortality rates.

Crude productivity statistics also ignore the major changes to the way consultants work. Technological advances, increased consultant presence and longer consultation times have done much to improve patient care. The recent Nuffield Trust report shows that workforces with higher proportions of medically qualified staff are strongly associated with higher productivity. Doctors are crucial to innovation in the NHS; their work not only improves quality, but also frequently saves taxpayers' money.

Paul Flynn

Chair, BMA consultants committee

• The commissioning of NHS services will be transferred to GP commissioning groups on 1 April. But senior staff say the NHS is not ready (Report, 20 March). I believe the deadline should be moved to later in the year. A massive public petition against NHS privatisation has to date attracted 355,000 signatures on the 38degrees website.

Professor Colin Leys (Comment, 19 March) says that "the decisive factor in what gets commissioned looks likely to be not the wishes of CCGs (let alone patients or voters) but corporate legal fire-power". These new regulations were quietly presented to parliament on 11 March. Ministers hope they will achieve force of law on 1 April without debate, without consultation.

Delaying implementing GP commissioning would create the time to debate, consult, modify and resolve all issues with the new regulations.

Dr Peter Harbour

Abingdon, Oxfordshire

• My friends tell me that the screening of the Spirit of 45 was an inspiring occasion, a reminder of a time of solidarity out of which the NHS was born. I'm reflecting sadly on the kind of democracy we have now. The protests after the section 75 regulations were laid before parliament seemed to succeed, and a redraft was promised. The public thinks the problem has been solved. But there is no significant change in the regulations, and the threat of a massive extension of privatisation of the NHS is undiminished. How can these regulations pass into law without even being subject to debate?

Sue Vaughan

Little Melton, Norfolk

• We don't want the private sector making profits from misery and illness. We want the profits these companies give to their shareholders to be ploughed back into the NHS to improve the care we offer to our patients. David Cameron and Nick Clegg, we know what you are doing to our NHS and we want you to stop it. Your friends in the City may be pleased with what you are doing and will reward you with directorships in the future, but the electorate in 2015 will remember the time you franchised out the NHS to the private sector and changed the NHS forever. What you've done is unforgivable.

Dr David Wrigley

Carnforth, Lancashire