Helping the government save money

Agreed although not sure how much it would save.
I would get free prescriptions (age based):despite working almost full time and getting private pension as does DH.
My niece got free laptops etc at university despite from a wealthy family and expensive private school as dyslexic.
As for the US health system all very well if you are wealthy or have employers insurance although the deductibles can be crippling.

Means testing causes so much resentment, not to mention weird marginal cliff edges which encourage unintended behaviours (like people not going for promotions at work). It is also expensive to run, negating some or sometimes all savings made.

I hate the language of 'net contributors' and 'net takers', but if your friend is earning £200k she will be paying a lot into the system and I don't begrudge her a free prescription at all.

But you can surely see that the country would be far better off if people focused on earning £200k pa instead of taking £114 off people like your friend every year?

And you're going to present it to your MP?

You’d probably be better off trying to look at local community initiatives and grass roots efforts to improve health, fitness and wellbeing.

There are people that are professionals with the remit of looking at budgetary decisions on a national level. They have access to a wealth of data and modeling to allow them to understand the potential impact of cuts.

Pumping money into education, training and emerging sectors to secure jobs and industries for generations to come will probably have a more significant impact than saving some money on prescriptions.

Reforming healthcare to reduce waste is really important, but prescription charges almost certainly isn’t the right button to push.

It makes no sense to me that it's cheaper for me to see a GP than get a haircut. I think GP appointments should be paid for. They differ from the rest of the NHS in that access to them is not triaged by a professional, so a rationing mechanism is necessary. I think this mechanism should be based on price rather than waiting times or appointment systems that don't work.

While (social) insurance is a good idea to pay for the kind of medical expenses most people can't afford, the low cost of GP appointments means they are not the sort of thing that should be covered by insurance.

(It might be OK for appointments to be cheaper or free for people on benefits though.)

I've worked in welfare benefits and veterans' rights for over a decade and have lobbied my various MPs, on one veterans related issue I had a question asked in the HOC and meetings with junior ministers with the relevant portfolios. So if you're not actually going to do anything proactive about these issues you feel so very strongly about, what was the point of your post to "find out ways government can save money" Just amounts to a riling exercise from where I'm sitting.

Absolutely clueless, you clearly don't understand how the US system works...

Hi Donald.

Cut VAT or give other incentives for parents to send their children to private school, saving the government more than £100k per child.

Oops they blew that one.

@Samdelila

Going after all uncollected tax inc council tax is the absolute first place I’d start!

from off shore and doggy millionaires to the cash in hand gardener and cake selling side hustlers.

@taxguru may know better than me but I read once that for every million spent on finding it you would get more back in uncollected tax. A double win in that it would also create more jobs but would be unpopular with both sides of the vote.

once we know that then start looking for saving,

The OP is totally right. Healthcare is a joke in the UK. The sooner we dump these ludicrous socialist ideas that only serve to keep the feckless lazy and indolent in luxury, the better.

We need to dump the whole NHS - shame you can't sell it - and move to a much fairer system where people get the healthcare they can afford and deserve.

Thank God the US has someone in charge who will make this happen.

What a ridiculous post.

So, more ways of punishing the poor?

Why don't you just admit you're not interested in saving the government money, you just want to make sure the poor and disabled learn their place and aren't getting anything you're not?

I don't need to calm down, thanks. I think you need to educate yourself, though.

Capping private rents, extra taxes on Airbnb earnings, capping MP expenses, and doing away with second homes for MPs (wtf is wrong with a Premier Inn?), closing tax loop holes and forcing companies who earn over £XXX amount but whose fulltime workers need UC top ups to pay the UC back to the government will save far, far more money than taking insulin from diabetics.

If you want to reduce medication costs, lobby Big Pharma to start playing fair with their pricing. A ventolin inhaler costs a few pence to produce, but they charge the NHS £6 each for them.

I don’t know. Stop subsidised childcare? Reinstate the two child cap? Stop free school meals?

Other than that, let’s just support each other. 😊

It's not giving away, the people have paid their fair share of tax. The NHS constitution is about providing comprehensive, free healthcare based on need, not ability to pay.

UK public sector spending on management consultants rose to a record high of approximately £3.4 billion in the 2023-24 financial year, up 57% from £2.1 billion in 2019-20.

This is an area where massive savings can be made, it increased massively during COVID and hasn't reduced since, it's also a major issue for the Government as using external consultants, means they have no in-house, knowledge and become reliant on external companies and large contracts, which I have seen first hand.

Having previously worked in a job that involved calculating the entitlement of a means tested benefit, it is complex and expensive and very time consuming- helping people complete application forms, requesting evidence, re-requesting evidence when it isn’t supplied the first time. Once supplied, checking the veracity of it, doing the calculation, sending the decision.

Then there’s the whole appeals process, not to mention re-calculating for changes in circumstances and having regular renewals of the award.

In amongst that of course, you have fraud investigations, prosecution etc. And not forgetting calculating overpayments and recovering them.

Still not complicated or expensive?