People would be happy to pay more tax if it went directly to the NHS

Assuming you pay NI, you've had a very significant tax cut.

Didn't hear of exemptions for higher earners.

I wouldn’t be, as a household we already pay £110k a year in tax and have private medical,
We feel fleeced enough

True

Generally on MN when posters are in favour of higher taxes it is tends to be for higher taxes on other people just not them or even better "tax the rich more" with the rich being defined as anyone earning say 50% more than them but most definitely not them.

How were people persuaded to make the change?

I wouldn't bother! NHS here.
junior doctors approx £14.50 per hour. Apparently that's more than enough
Nurse salary according to the BBC over £35k a year.
amazing pension- actually my husbands private pension is worth more
Tory Government say more nurses are needed. Each trust has a budget to pay staff. If they spend more the government ask why. Think of your bills.

1 nurse to 7-8 poorly patients in some areas. Can you imagine looking after 8 people with severe dementia, cancer, heart attack, alcohol withdrawal causing them to have hallucinations and wee on another patients bed??
GP's burnt out due to relentless government targets or face a fine so leaving abroad.
everyone wants to leave as the pay is shit!
staff on their knees working often 50+ hour weeks and at least 10 hours without pay!
I'm currently looking at other jobs outside NHs. Shame as I used to love my job.

To be honest I just cannot afford to pay more tax. With cost of living increases and salaries not rising much there isn’t enough to go around as it is

no I do not want an American style healthcare this is always used to shut the argument down. We can look at France and Germany both far superior healthcare services than to the NHS

But those systems are no more "efficient" or less wasteful than the NHS i.e paying for treatment, then claiming the costs back again....
German system is also known for its bureaucratic administrative procedures.

They are also primarily both taxpayer (employer/employee) funded models

Fundamentally, European healthcare is better because they fund healthcare more than we do and they do that via higher taxes, France has an overall tax rate some 10% higher than the UK.

Similar with Germany too.

The UK on the other hand prefers a lower tax rate and shit public services.

On the USA system, the UK is currently heading down this route, with more and more private companies taking over care, no sign we are looking at a European model of regulated pooled insurance, which of course is just another expense on top of general taxation, which posters say they cannot afford....

Personally, I feel at my tax limit. I feel squeezed beyond belief with everything I pay so no, I don’t want to see more money go to the NHS because we now pay the highest tax rates for 70 years and have the most rubbish service from the NHS.

Sounds like you want a privatised health service... the USA fully private model is twice as wasteful as the NHS.

You do realise there are other models and countries out there other than the two extremes that are the US and the NHS. Right?

14 years of Tory government might have something to do with it.

WE used to have, what was widely regarded as the best health service in the world really not that long ago. Whatever could have happened?

NHS loses title of world’s best healthcare system | The Independent

I should have said the companies I have worked for

no I do not want an American style healthcare this is always used to shut the argument down. We can look at France and Germany both far superior healthcare services than to the NHS

I am aware of the private companies within the NHS and like others who work/worked within the NHS have pointed out again and again as they do on these threads the waste within the NHS is eye watering I see it daily. Like I have said before I experience all the time how we are just making ends meet, how we struggle, how we can’t give the full service we want to, how teams are shifting about to save money, how we can’t provide the service we should be able to

the IT services I can’t even start on that the frustration this caused at times being told to log on the system to raise a job when no one was able to log in 🙄 is just one of them

we deserve better all of us attitudes are changing towards the NHS we have no need to be thankful poor service becuae it’s free at point of service and parties are realising that

Private companies don't spend tax payers money?

This one does - £400 million of it.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/11/biggest-tory-donor-looking-diane-abbott-hate-all-black-women?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Private companies don't spend tax payers money? sorry but you re showing a huge amount of ignorance there.... Water, rail, defence, environment, heating, nuclear energy, steel, defence.... all these industries take huge amounts of money, often with zero over sight & at amounts that make the NHS look like remarkably good value for money...

2 broken down aircraft carriers and a dud nuclear deterrent... anyone?

...and thats before we look at bank bail outs and covid business loans...

Surely if you work in the NHS, you ve seen the private companies dealing with Neuro and crisis care in the community? all spending tax payers money!

The Kings Fund looked into waste and efficiency in the NHS and it compares favourably with european health services....

Sounds like you want a privatised health service... the USA fully private model is twice as wasteful as the NHS.

I've done a lot of work for NHS hospital trusts within IT and its pretty good, i could give examples of poor practice but i could do that with a major defence contractor too....

No definitely not! It’s outlived its usefulness in its present form.

No we shouldn't give the NHS more money to waste. The whole service is inefficient and disorganised and there is zero accountability taken by the people who work in it for its failures. Change comes from within and they do not want to change. I've engaged with multiple different NHS services over the last 4 years - the lack of follow up from the cataract surgeon that resulted in my dad going blind, the appalling lack of any humanity in the care of either of my parents in A&E an then in the geriatric ward, the chaotic discharge procedures, the delivery of incorrect equipment and the refusal to collect it, the returns to reassess care needs which had been assessed only the week before, the shambolic mental health care for DD, the list goes on and on ... it was all appalling. And no amount of money is going to solve the problem of rude, disengaged staff who demand politeness and gratitude for barely doing their job, don't reciprocate and then resort to threats if you dare to complain. The NHS is nothing to be proud of, its an embarrassment.

Oh blimey. I just googled "serco gp contract".

Spoilt for choice re Serco failures.

Just one eg:
'Disgraceful' Serco falsified GP out-of-hours figures
A FTSE-100 company that provides out-of-hours GP care for the NHS faked records hundreds of times to mask serious short-staffing, a damning report by the National Audit Office has found.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/9913780/Disgraceful-Serco-falsified-GP-out-of-hours-figures.html

Yes but multi national companies are not spending tax payers money

Wha....?

Many, many multi-national profit-making companies are spending taxpayers' money.

What do you think Capita, and Serco, and G4S, and ATOS, and Lockheed Martin, and Fujitsu... do?

Some of them have profit streams outside government, but others exist only to farm taxpayers. Because their contract is with the government dept which commissioned them ("Customer 1"), while the people who actually work at the sharp end or are service users ("Customer 2") have no say in the matter, there is a disastrous cosy network which provides jobs for the boys and girls while being awful for the country.

This doesn't stop being true when the contracts these multi-nationals have are in the healthcare sector. In fact isn't it Serco which has already managed to muck up a contract to provide GPs in London?

Yes but multi national companies are not spending tax payers money

if it becomes too much of an issue, shareholders unhappy will be looked into and changes made it’s almost impossible to make these sort of changes in the NHS

the waste in the NHS is eye watering I have worked for international companies in a range of industries I changed career and the waste I see in the NHS is on another level the costs of just maintaining out unit with everyday maintenance is eye water, our new IT equipment, new printers is so often not needed just a few examples

Overall, we do need to spend more on NHS, but not until reform has happened

I ve worked for many large national and multi national companies, the level of waste (sometimes fraud) is often incredible & i ve wondered how they managed to make any profit.

The NHS will also have examples of fraud and waste but Reform takes huge amounts of time, effort and money!! and will make little difference to patient care, e.g, in itself, wont produce more staff, equipment or buildings.

That "might" come later or might not... extra staff, which the NHS is desperate for, is the most costly thing they need, staffing costs are almost 50% of the entire NHS budget and we have far less staff than comparable health systems.
We could double the number of nurses we have and still have less than Germany.

I'm the same. It was HORRIFYING. The trust I worked at kept shuffling people around keeping rubbish, lazy staff in jobs that didn't really need to exist. It created a minefield for the patients & total chaos. I have so many stories of total waste & pandemonium. The attitude of the management & non-clinical staff was APPALLING. No care/concern for patients.

Overall, we do need to spend more on NHS, but not until reform has happened.

@Alexandra2001 the NHS works for anyone who would qualify for a job in it on intellectual terms. It is too complicated for most people who are slower of thought, which is at least 49% of the population. Those people need handholding through the basics. DP, who is decidedly not among the intellectually challenged, has solved the issue by delegating the management of it to me. I grasp quite a lot of the science in medicine, because it was a topic I had to be on top of during work years.

I agree with you in your frustrations and I really fear any future in which anyone not a digital native can't cope. That said, my mum (89) and dad (90) still get by although neither look at their phones unless they make a noise.

@Bushmillsbabe How many band 7s are there? and you should really know that at B7 many roles are no longer clinical.

Agree on not enough managers etc.

Funding? in real terms, facing cuts, its only "higher than ever" due to v high inflation and Covid measures.

Who has actually said (on here) Throw money at the NHS ? no one.

Money always has to be targeted and long term, really pisses me me off when i hear sunak saying "we gave the NHS x amount for winter pressures.." so fucking what??? the NHS needs a constant stream of targeted funds across many years, to address winter pressures, which right now are also spring summer and autumn ones.

2 weeks Urgent, 6 weeks non urgent - You work in the private sector, its also Anecdotal, your team isn't the NHS as a whole, nor is it representative.

the NHS isn't even achieving that in Cancer Care - read the recent report by the Health Ombudsman..

I'm just wondering how many people commenting about whether charging would or wouldn't work are actually NHS staff/managers? And same for comments about too many managers? And that nurses etc are low paid?

There are many narratives spun by the press about

• how poorly paid qualified NHS staff are - in context, an NHS band 7 (more than 5 years experience) physio, OT, nurse is paid £50,000 outside London, £57,000 in London as a basic, with extra for working night shifts or weekends. With 8 weeks a year holiday (Inc BH's) and good pension and maternity pay. Not a fortune, but well above national average salary, and with good benefits
• 'too many managers' The NHS actually has fewer managers than many comparable size organisations. The bigger problem is that many managers are clinical staff with no actual training on how to manage, and are in the role either because they were pushed into doing temporarily and ended up stuck there, or because there are few other options for advancing career clinically. They don't really have the training in effective people management, so it's very pot luck whether you get a good manager who drives improvements, or one which just ticks boxes and allow poor quality staff to continue in roles not suited for
• that NHS funding is dropping - its not, it's higher than its ever been.

There are so many popular narratives around the NHS, that people are not aware of the real issues. 5 of my team have left in past year and moved in private practice. 2 was due to lack of opportunity to progress, 3 due to stress caused by patient behaviour. None due to salary or workload. Team is well funded and wait list under 2 weeks for urgent and 6 for non urgent.

So the narrative that just throwing money at NHS is the answer isn't correct. There are structural issues and patient behaviour challenges which are deep rooted and nothing will improve until these are tackled.