To think we can all afford to pay a bit more tax...

[HeyDuggee24]

Obviously I dont mean low earners, but anyone who earns the national average or above.

Both me an DH earn around the national average, and tbh I feel very lucky and a bit rich. That is with a ds in full time childcare.

I was looking at getting private health care at £100 a month and I've been thinking, I'd rather pay that in tax and have an nhs that helps everyone than pay an insurance company and probably never use it myself..

So, an extra 2% in tax each would be less than £50 each a month. Yeah, I'd like it in my pocket but I could live without it and if everyone who earned the national average or above paid it, it would add up to a lot surely?

It just all seems so dismal at the moment. The tories will take away from those who need it but everyone feels there is no way Labour can fund its manifesto.

Maybe if we all pitched in a bit we could still have good lives but makes others lives a little better too.

I don't want to pay more tax while I'm working full time, paying for child care and begging favours if I run late while colleagues are sticking rigidly to 16 hours because 'it's not worth it'. Plus benefitting from the add ons to being on a low income.

As for he NHS I am sick of hearing how amazing it is. It isn't. We are 12 months overdue for a paed appointment, have had terrible experiences with other services and wait three hours to see a GP or book and get an appointment in three weeks and hope it isn't anything sinister.

So , it's fine. It's great in places. But it's not amazing and run by angels.

Noeuf and the NHS will stay that way with late appointments all the while we underfund it.

The NHS is amazing for what it DOES achieve.

Having reflected on this, as a higher rate tax payer, if a party had a policy of paying an additional hypothecated tax to deal with our social care crisis, I'd vote for that. I'd much rather pay more tax now while I'm earning than have my home sold and most assets taken to pay care bills after I'm dead. I have a child who will not be independent in adulthood and I can't bear the thought of his inheritance being swallowed after I've kicked it. But equally care has got to be paid for. I'd rather do that now.

Alfie I disagree. I suspect from our experience there is poor management and poor systems in place. Personally I would pare it right back to essential services but combine this with revisiting who qualifies for free stuff.

Alfie I would argue that it is not underfunded. I'd say if you took out things it was never meant to do and reorganised it, sorted out the poor management and allocated the existing spend better, it wouldn't need more taxpayer funding.

The more money you throw at it, the more it swallows.

I agree which is why I have said umpteen times there needs to be a non partisan, non political bias talk about the NHS and the way forward.

It won't happen though as people are too keen to political point score.

The NHS has been poorly run and administered for years. Not entirely down to the Tories, it was shit under (new) Labor too. There is too much waste, too many penpushers, too much paying exorbitant overtime or agency rates for staff who are already employed by the NHS, the whole PFI debacle where hospitals are rented back, costing far more than it would ever have cost to build and maintain the sane directly.

However much money you shove into it will NEVER resolve those problems!

At best, if you poured in billions you might effect a small improvement in the short term. But that could be counter productive encouraging some who don't use NHS currently, or do so infrequently, to make greater use of it. So then there are more users, resources become stretched again, and hey presto we're back where we started.

So no, I don't want to pay more tax, nor do I see any cogent reason why I should.

I agree. I would be happy to pay more tax.

The NHS is pretty efficient in productivity terms - it produces better outcomes for less money than other healthcare systems.

I think we can all see that some of the administrative functions of the NHS are inefficient on a practical level but this is partly because every time budgets are squeezed, admin and IT spend is the first to be cut. Investment is needed to support this to improve, not cuts!

When I lived in Australia (8 years ago) higher earners where given the choice to either pay an additional 1% tax or to take out private health insurance. I have to confess I don't know what effect that had on the health system but it certainly addressed a funding issue and offered choice in the matter.

Tiger But what are these budget squeezes you talk about? If the NHS employs 300,000 more people now than it did in 2010, that says to me budgets have increased. You can't squeeze budgets enough to find the wage bill for 300,000 new employees! Ergo, the money is there, it's obviously being used poorly.

Speak for yourself!

I'm low earning as self employed with an income that varies widely year to year, single person so already carrying bills alone, more tax would make it impossible to work. And self employed as disabled and unable to hold down a salaried job despite being highly trained. Under the last labour government I was a worker drone. Entitled to nothing, including keeping much of what I earned. No, that belonged to hard working families (disability meant I couldn't carry a child to term so failed there too) and other groups of interest.

And no, I don't believe only the high earners would pay more tax. We all would. Very happy for you that you'd be fine, how lovely for you.

Another Scot who pays more income tax than I would in England and out education system is nosediving at a scary rate. I don't object to paying tax, but sadly it doesn't seem to necessarily equate to better services for all.

Yabu. The burden should be on those of us who can, not those just getting by.

Defo not. I earn above minimum wage but below living wage.

We couldn't afford more tax. The amount we pay is shocking anyway to be honest.

I'm not a high rate tax payer and I'd be more than willing to pay a bit extra if there were clear results.

Shatner that is a very simplistic view indeed and it doesn't support your conclusion that there is more funding or that it is being used poorly, sorry. For example, nurses have had a pay cut of around 14% since Tories took over. So that could well cover more staff for less money. Pay freezes have been in place for years across all staff sectors. Also, the health service treats more and more people every year - so unless funding increases for each extra person treated, hospitals are being asked to do more for the same money. That's a squeeze on a budget. Even if there aren't more people using the health service, those that are, well they are getting fatter and older and sicker and generally more complex in their needs. Just take maternity as a single example, an obese mum costs the NHS a few thousand pounds more than a mum with a healthy weight due to the intensity of the maternity care they require. The number of obese mothers is increasing so maternity care costs are going up.

So, That's just a few examples (I could go on!) It can't be denied that hospitals have been delivering more care for less money for several years and it is no longer possible for them to do that.

As a percentage of GDP our spend is much lower than most of our European neighbours too.

Velvetspoon

I think people forget that the NHS was on its knees when Tories left power. Something had to be done otherwise the NHS was going to fail.

PFI deals it makes it harder for the current government to underfund the NHS, as hospitals have commercial finance commitments to honour, which slashing staff and closing wards can't help with.

PFI wasn't the best solution but it did bring about huge improvements - modern hospitals that could meet the needs of patients and not crumbling Victorian infrastructure. This lead to real improvements in patient outcomes too. It wasn't all bad.

On another thread we have national average earners saying they will struggle to cover FSMs being taken away. I don't think you can speak for other people in regards to affordability.

The NHS is pretty efficient in productivity terms - it produces better outcomes for less money than other healthcare systems.

Thank you tiger. Good point!

I disagree. I'm not a low earner, I get an ok salary but I am a single parent who gets no help from Ds's dad - I have a mortgage and bills to pay, and no I can't afford an extra £50 per month, I have no life as it is.

It's a good idea in theory but to think that all people earning a national wage can afford an extra £50 is very niave and blinkered.

My dp earns £28k a year and takes home £1800 after tax, we get a small of tax credit as I'm a sahm looking after our disabled daughter.
£50 a month would effect us a hell of a lot. Our house and council tax combined comes to over £1k a month, and after bills we have about £100 a week to pay for food and other household expenses.

If you live up north where house prices are cheap, then maybe it wouldn't effect you so much, but for us, it uses over half our annual household income.

Maybe we can all theoretically afford more. But it is hopelessly naive to think that extra tax = magical utopia for the NHS et al. There is a titanic structural issue that needs addressing first.

And where does it stop? It effectively becomes the boy who cried wolf after the umpteenth time that we are asked for "just a little bit more".

No I don't think I could being a shift worker on a short month £50 is s big deal!... £50 is a food shop for a week!

However if my £50 a month goes towards the NHS for my DC (currently expecting) then I wouldn't be opposed to it. However I would probably be better of scrimping together £50 a month for the Family Bupa plan through work!

But then again I live in London so having a wage near the national average here doesn't mean much... our monthly bills come to more than a whole monthly wage in our pokey little flat!

Nope throwing money at a problem doesn't make it disappear. The NHS is asbused by the public and spends too much money on admin roles that are not needed.

Charge people for missed appointments, bin off the extra layers of unneeded overpaid staff, stop giving prescriptions of items that are cheap (say under £2/£3) to people just because they get free prescriptions. Give pharmacists the power to actually prescribe medications (contraception and stuff like that where it's purely blood pressure and off you go) to save gp appointments.

I'd be willing to pay a bit more tax but I am in a 2 income household.
That said only if a full review of child tax credits was undertaken. I am fed up to the back teeth of colleagues of mine refusing paid overtime ( long term paid overtime) or increasing their hours permanently because it impacts on there TC.
Could make a lot of savings there!

Maybe we can all theoretically afford more. But it is hopelessly naive to think that extra tax = magical utopia for the NHS et al. There is a titanic structural issue that needs addressing first.

I totally agree, from reading both manifesto's both Labour and Cons are offering the same amount of funding, how can people claim 'Labour will fix it', if they are only looking to give the same finances as Conservative? In addition, increasing the tax on private medical insurance will put a lot of people off private healthcare putting further strain on the NHS. But no matter hospital car parks will be free I guess.