To think putting vat on private healthcare when many people use it because the NHS won't treat them is monstrously cruel

I dont agree with vat on private health care BUT if the gov insists on charging it on private school fees then I think its only correct that its charged on health care etc. My opinion is that neither should charge vat.

Yes, the damage done to the economy, and the well being our children with the COVID interventions will rattle on for decades to come.

No disagreement here on that!

And yet all this dancing around discussions about tax rises, or please god no more provenly harmful austerity driven cuts, but no one is mentioning the biggest problem with our economy. The thing which has cost us billions upon billions each year. The biggest national self-harm in history.

I completely understand but these are the conversations we need to have. We need a consensus across parties, of which services we want to fund and which we don't. Unfortunately there simply isn't the money to sustain the current levels of services (which aren't even good in many areas ie the level of service is shit due to lack of money).
1 way of doing this, which some more enlightened countries do, is to give tax incentives for anyone using private healthcare or schools. This way they are still paying in to support the services they don't use and relieve the burden from the state because fewer people are using state funded services.

Cutting anything is emotive and not a vote winner but if we offered tax incentives to not use state services then we wouldn't have to make cuts or raise taxes.

Whilst most do say make someone rise pay I don’t think more tax is the answer.

Reeves pledged the last budget was a one off tax hike. It’s because they’ve messed up with the NI they have such a shortfall. That last increased tax is why she’s scrabbling around for more. It’s a downward spiral.

My personal experience has absolutely no bearing on the limited number of moves a government can make to manage an economy and the inevitable consequence of taxing productivity into the ground.

Starmer clearly said VAT on education was going to housing and defence, not education, i.e., they lied, but yes I agree a tax on healthcare could provide more money for NHS.
However at same time borrowing and spending os out of control and Labour have made the cost of servicing that debt to rise.
You simply can't balance the budget by simply taxing more and more. You also have to make targeted cuts too. In private sector you can't balance budgets by asking for more money, you will be sacked.
The out of work benefits bill for example is the highest it has ever been. Labour have increased the numbers out of work through policy choices, so the taxpayer is now footing the bill. That needs cutting.

Guessing you have no personal experience of trying to get PIP or CHC.
When CHC assessors come in to the meeting knowing there’s no money left so they can’t offer any care for the person who is unable to feed or toilet themselves so they just have to stay in hospital inappropriately.
When you’ve sat with someone in their 20s who can’t see the point in life as their disability needs are so clearly inconsequential to our society, then say ‘oh but we have to cut services further’.
Funny how so May are happy to impose ‘hardship’ on others, eg private education, but as soon as it effects them reality bites eg private healthcare.

It's like fighting with gravity. It's how things are, not how you'd like them to be. Yes, there will be downwind costs of cutting welfare - it still needs to happen.

These very few other options that raise enough money. To raise £40bn you need to find 4m people to each pay £1,000 more. The

Cutting welfare and taxes will directly lead to increased costs for NHS, Police and Councils in both short term and even more in longer term. There is plentiful evidence linking poverty to physical health issues and outcomes, socioeconomic issues inc crime and disorder, and amount of council authorised support needed.
Cut welfare so you can cut taxes and you hugely increase costs long term.

This isn't a feelings conversation. It's just a statement of fact. More tax, less growth, high bond yields, less revenue for spending.

So you think a country with record child poverty, still increasing from the last 15yrs, should make life even harder for those who have so little.
As you don’t feel the state should support those in need, how do you actively help your community?

As an NHS employee I’d disagree. They are currently cutting more spending with further downbandings in the NHS, which will lead to further decreased services as more of us leave … to work privately
VAT on private healthcare could be used to help fund the NHS, just like VAT on education is said to fund schools.

🎯

I don't think we should be paying any more tax. I think that we need to cut welfare and services in a controlled manner while we still can. If we tax all growth and innovation out of the economy then there'll be nothing left to run the basics and shelter the most vulnerable.

The waits are so long a child will be an adult by the time they are diagnosed so goodbye ehcp and support in school

EHCPs are based on needs, not diagnosis. You don’t need a diagnosis to request an EHCNA or get an EHCP.

And also no political will to cut spending which is what we should be doing before raising taxes.

Everyone agrees someone needs to pay more tax and everyone also agrees that this should be someone else as they feel they already pay enough tax. It’s exhausting. I wish we could try making more money but there is no political will to make the country more attractive to growth businesses and investors.

But why is it stirring? There was overwhelming support for VAT on seeking private education, even for kids with SEND whose needs the state could not meet. Surely there’ll be a similar level of support for this?

It sounded like you support VAT on seeking appropriate education for kids with SEND (which state can’t provide) but don’t support VAT on privately sought healthcare to meet the needs you’ve identified. The obvious difference is adult vs child.
If you are saying you don’t support VAT on either education or healthcare I stand corrected.
if you support VAT on education but not healthcare then my point stands.

Bollocks. My OH has had cancer for 8 years and pays privately for "standing" MRI scans because he can't tolerate the narrow tube scanners used by the NHS. His oncologist insists on a full body MRI scan every year to continue his life-long chemotherapy that he needs to survive, but she can't offer a "standing" MRI on the NHS, so he has no choice but to pay privately for the standing one, at a cost of about £5k per time. That's not elitist, it's survival due to NHS inadequacy! Before he started going private, he tried, probably over a dozen times, to tolerate the NHS tube ones, but had panic attacks each time, the last time, he collapsed with a heart beat over 200 and had to be rushed to A&E Resus for them to steady his heart, so very serious and we won't try again, rightly so!

haha probably. They’re utterly woeful but you made me laugh. They probably will.

If everyone took that approach to MN threads there would be very little happening here.