Is the NHS now about treating 'shi t life syndrome'?

[mids2019]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/03/the-guardian-view-on-labours-nhs-plan-it-is-right-to-celebrate-medical-science-but-delivery-is-the-hard-part

A Guardian article but it seems like this push to reduce health inequality is making the NHS look like part of our benefits system. While I agree with good health for all is this strategy going to appeal to a middle class tax payer base who are a lot of their tax going to a struggling NHS with the money ultimately flowing from their pockets to more deprived areas? It seems like the poorer the area the more snazzier and funded your health service will be and I just wonder if ultimately this may too the balance towards a more health insurance based syatem?

Where did I say that?

I didn’t.

Read again.

I’m not an economist.

Im simply not in favour of punishing a demographic that forms a much smaller part of welfare bill in favour of keeping it all going for a demographic who drains a lot more.

Pensioners are set to increase a further 1% - someone has got to pay it. Keeping the very demographic who will be paying it (today’s children) by punishing their parents (ie increasing child poverty and all the issues that find with that) seems ludicrous.

Close tax loopholes. Do something about our insecure, ludicrously highly priced private rental situation, raise wages - stop bloody subsidising the payroll of big companies making record profits year on year on year.

And our benefits bill is actually only average when looking at other OECD countries in terms of percentage of GDP - it’s not ‘out of control’ in comparison to other countries.

A race to the bottom is not something anyone should be entertaining.

Fine. So what do you want to spend more money on?

I’m not paid just shy of £94,000 to make those decisions.

I simply don’t agree with forcing anyone onto food bags and utilities tokens because (unless over 66) they're deemed feckless scroungers who are apparently oddly fat fat being so poor (previous poster’s idea) No way to treat people.

Im no economist - I don’t know what the answer is - but it certainly isn’t pointing the finger at a demographic who are draining far less than the demography who is smaller but draining the most...
...after having paid into it for 40-odd years. Have you forgotten that bit? Working-age people should be "draining far less", in fact they should be paying in! How come prime-of-life people get your sympathy but the old and infirm don't?

It's funny how, when asked for solutions, you duck out of it by repeating that you are "not an economist" and yet you can merrily trot out numbers to blame the cost of looking after pensioners for everything. I remember the days when large numbers used to die every year due to hypothermia - is that what you want to return to?

Don't be so quick to shout down ideas if you haven't got a single one yourself then. You obviously haven't got a clue what might work, so why on earth do you think you know what wouldn't work?

Meanwhile, it is fine for her to attack everyone on a low income. Reduce them to be deserving nothing more than food parcels, claiming that they are all lazy and morbidly obese. I haven't seen anything realistic from her on here, just a big fat 'I want what little they have'. People like that are what is wrong with this country IMO. You are most welcome to disagree.

apart from they aren't looking after OP.

OP is paying their salary out of her net income and their healthcare, their kids education etc. out of her taxes.

To be fair, she's just said that she wants to pay less tax to fund them. She hasn't said that they have no intellect or talent - in fact the opposite, since she believes they could contribute more than they do - and she certainly hasn't ever called for eugenics.

Taxing inheritance is one of the most stupid moves though.
If you follow non-doms story, the last drop which pushed them out was taxation of inheritance worldwide. So when they realised that their DCs will pay 40% on their businesses/assets abroad they started moving out pronto.
Just wait and see what happens with farmers.
Taxation of pensions is leading to some very interesting consequences as well.

You really cannot just take take take without giving anything back.

40% on inheritance... of assets which were paid for using income taxed at minimum 40% marginal rate. So only getting to pass one third of what you worked extra for to your children, with the government stealing the other 2/3 to give to other people. (Because none of this tax actually goes to us.) No, that's not OK.

Let alone inheritance for non doms! I mean, come on - what planet are they on?!?

@RosesAndHellebores I grew up in poverty and I was obese. I would have a FSM but as it was the leftovers from what the paid children would eat, it would be rubbish. When I did have tea it was chips cooked in a fryer as potatoes were cheap and it’s cheap to just heat one hob.

Your ignorance is astounding.

Thankfully, due to New Labour, I went to university (no fees, bursary), trained to be a teacher and thanks to a HSBC graduate mortgage scheme could buy a house at 22. I then taught myself about nutrition and exercise. I didn’t get where I am today because someone thought a healthy food package was the answers to all ills.

Actually, I said I'd pay more tax if we could find a way that provided better outcomes and genuine support for some people to start helping themselves.

Neurodiversitydoctor quoted a very prescient link to a quote by George Orwell, from Wigan Pier. It noted that the poor do not want to eat raw Carrots and wholemeal bread and that's not what they want to spend their money on. It's a noble concept but let's not forget that there hadn't been welfare for very long in 1936. In the 90 years since, the way it's done has not been seen to work very well and we need to find other, better ways.

@MrsMurphyIWish the way your school dealt with FSM was disgusting. That is not my experience of how schools deal with FSM.

Do you not think it would have been better if your parents had been given more support and help. More towards the utilities and more food, food that was better than potatoes.

I am glad you did well and were able to buy at 22.

You sound incredibly snobby and selfish. Do you really think poorer areas are going to have 'snazzier' and better funded health care? Or that half the middle class want to move abroad rather than pay a bit more tax to me make a fairer society? Think you need to get out more and widen your social circle.

In an ideal world yes, but that would mean I had to have parents who cared and who were at home. Poverty is so complex. The reason I ate chips was because as a child, I could cook those myself. You’re looking at the problem very simply as poverty can be solved with a care package.

Reform are leading in the polls? What are their views on the NHS?

I think for many there is a feeling people shouldn't have to fund the consequences of other people's lifestyle choices. Also people want money to be invested into technical advances in medicine such as improved breast cancer treatment, immunotherapy, gene editing etc. which can provide tangible benefits for everyone instead of healthcare funding going to improve prevention of illness where those schemes are of dubious value for money. If you lead a lifestyle that leads to diabetes that is your choice ultimately and isn't there an argument you should therefore take out health insurance to mitigate against the consequences instead of burdening the NH S where money could be directed elsewhere.

in a perfect world we would have a perfect NH S treating everything perfectly but we do not. Hard choices have to be made and when people feel their family may receive sub optimal treatment then I think, yes, it is time to question things.

also working in the NHS you can see some of the inefficiencies of having local community care in that you simply can't get the equipment (MRI, CT etc.) into local hospitals as well as staff with expertise (there simply aren't enough). So much time and money is wasted for instance with consultants driving around different regional clinics because patients want a shorter journey. Sorry but if you'r. ill people should be willing to drive to a large city hospital in their county (obviously parking and support for travel costs could be considered). In theory it sounds lovely having a local hospital but it is horrendously inefficient and potentially not to the patient benefit ultimately as you are spreading staff over too wide an area.

The nhs doesn’t fund research and development. That’s grants and funding from non nhs sources.

if people want improved treatments in cancer research etc that is nothing to do with the NHS core funding.

I agree you can't take take take without giving anything back. It's not the minimum wage person healing through your groceries at Aldi/Marks and Spencers that's been doing that.
The point about non-doms is a nonsequiter. I was talking about land/assets within the UK. Which are currently a more reliable investment opportunity than investing in business a lot of the time (because you know it's going to go up and up and up in value even if you leave it covered in plastic rubbish and fly tipping). The more land increases in value the more it becomes attractive to invest in (by foreign billionaires, by investment funds, by individuals borrowing from banks). The more people are then priced out of buying their own homes or have to take increasingly large loans to do so. And the higher housing benefits have to be because rents rise alongside it (BTL landlords have to pay their heavy mortgages somehow).to the extent that people working hard can't afford a roof without government subsidies. And the more some people on this thread froth at the mouth that the poor are "taking" from them. Can't you see thats not the actual direction the money is flowing?

@nearlylovemyusername I agree farmers need protecting. Any tax on land would need to protect them. But currently 50% of the land in the UK is owned by 1% of the population. And no, that 1% is not compromised entirely of salt of the earth farmers intent on feeding the country. Of the other 50% of the land an increasing amount has heavy mortgages on it meaning that a lot of money is flowing offshore or into an investment firms coffers.
I am not anti bank. I am not anti landowner. But the current system is not sustainable and refusing to pay for healthcare for people in the most deprived areas won't make it more sustainable.

Good to see some common sense.

People can’t see it. And successive governments just continue to trot out the old chestnuts of scroungers and being ‘tough’ on ‘fecklessness’ and ‘benefit fraud’ and ‘workshy’ people.

The poor should be thinner?

Wow, now that's an ignorant comment.

Why are you hell bent on believing that health inequality equals feckless poor people making bad choices?

Breathtaking, isn’t it?

The squeezed middle class blame the working class, immigrants and benefits scroungers. The working class blame immigrants and the unemployed. The unemployed blame immigrants. Meanwhile, in the background
https://todaysconveyancer.co.uk/40-billion-worth-uk-property-owned-companies-offshore-tax-havens-study/

https://www.ft.com/content/e36cec28-7acd-4154-b57d-923b5d1610da

https://www.fwi.co.uk/business/markets-and-trends/land-markets/land-prices-in-england-up-one-third-on-average-in-past-decade

The people caught up in this system arent evil. But the system itself isn't sustainable.

Also "hard choices" need to be made but those "hard choices" never seem to be choices that negatively affect the bank balances of the owners of the Spectator, Telegraph, Mail etc etc.