To think we should all just pay 1-2% income tax to help fix the nhs

[Ieatcake]

Lots of health professionals are saying it's like a third world country. We need more beds and more money for socialcare. Not many would even notice a tiny tax rise and it would help fix it ASAP.

We spend a much smaller share of GDP on health than European and the western countries (this is combined NHS and private money)

More money will have to be spent.
So the choice is do you want this to be private money or from taxation?

Adding up all the IVF, health tourists, well paid bank staff and alleged breasts enlargements will not add up to anywhere near enough money to close the gap with other countries.

So taxation or private spending.

My fear is that as people spend more on private healthcare they start to think " well, why should I pay anything to the NHS if I don't use it?"
The sense of solidarity and pooled sharing of risk breaks down.

But who pays for healthcare for someone with a chronic, life long illness? A child born with cystic fibrosis? No insurer would touch them.

What about those with significant mental health problems which mean they are unable to make rational choices? Insurers very very rarely cover mental health treatment at all, given they are often life long conditions.

the very sickest and most expensive patients have to be paid for by the state at the point where the healthiest don't qualify for assistance and so no longer feel like the NHS is part of their social fabric.

I have private healthcare but I would happily pay another 2pc in tax to fully fund an NHS.

@ButteredScone The idea that the Tories want the NHS to fail is moronic. They want it to be a success as do Labour as do the Lib Dems. Only the myopically partisan think the Tories want to damage the NHS deliberatley

It's an easy and lazy soundbite though, isn't it?
Like Saint Jezza will come along and suddenly it'll be medical nirvana all round (to go with the rest of his utopian fiction) because after all, the cruel to their marrow Tories have been hiding all the cash on purpose because they hate people.

I wonder if people actually know what a third world country is like in terms of medical care and a health service when they say the NHS is like that in a third world country?

People who smoke already pay enough on tax of fags to more then cover there cost to the nhs. Alcohol is also already taxed highly. Overweight people cost the nhs a lot of money for the added health issues the generally unhealthy lifestyle brings. Also now there is specialist equipment for the size of these people and extra staff are needed when rolling these clients etc. Sorry guys I'm not fattest at all these are just points based on bits if been taught through work training. I wish I could put this nicer

Users should pay for more

Health inequalities and the social and economic determinants of health are a huge factor. The problem with that is that the people using the NHS the most are the most vulnerable and deprived in society because they are the most vulnerable to poor health. They can't simply 'pay for more'.

Put twinkie in charge
She seems to have a good idea what’s actually going on.
I have a high level volunteer position within our local NHS Trust and people would be horrified at what goes on in terms of management and box ticking.

You shouldn't be able to make a private profit on NHS healthcare.

So you also want to nationalise every GP surgery (GP partners are self employed business partnerships who make profit by providing GP services), every Optician, every High Street dentist, every Pharmacy? Lots of people are making "profits" out of the NHS above and beyond their "salary" equivalent.

Clearly, not all is as rosy! There was an article in our local press about the £50K p.a. savings made by nurses in just one ward at our local hospital who decided to source their own basic cleaning/hygiene supplies instead of using central procurement, for things like rubber gloves, aprons, paper towels, disposable sick bowls, etc. If a single ward can save £50K per year, then there must be massive savings to be made.

Example: the nurses decided they could buy the sick bowls at 50p each rather than 75p from NHS SC.

But NHS SC is actually buying them from 25p from their external supplier.

Paying 50p for them might be a short-term win for that facility, of that specific trust, but it doesn’t mean that the NHS as a whole is saving anything. In fact, they’ve just paid more for them.

Money paid to NHS SC is still money in the NHS. How it all gets redistributed I haven’t a clue.

I’m not saying for one minute that savings can’t be made, but to think that some nurses have magically come up with huge savings that NHS Procurement and NHS SC don’t have the ability to see themselves is far too simplistic. It’s great for local news headlines, of course.

Overweight people cost the nhs a lot of money for the added health issues the generally unhealthy lifestyle brings.

Who are also paying a whopping 20% VAT on unhealthy food, such as crisps, chocolate, cakes, etc., and 20% VAT on fast food, takeaways, etc.

It's not just smokers and drinkers who are paying a lot of tax.

If the obese just ate fresh fruit, vegetables, and basic foods (zero vat rated) and cooked their own healthier options instead of takeaways and fast food, the govt (and therefore NHS) would lose billions in VAT.

Not to mention, obese tend to die younger, so save the country a fortune in not paying pensions for 30/40 years, not having to pay for care homes into their 80's/90's etc.

You have to look at the bigger picture.

Plenty of money for wars, use some of that.

Re Twinkie's payrise comment. That's all well and good if the widespread recruitment freezes haven't affected the higher band posts in the trust and the training and development budgets for the courses to provide the training for staff to move on hasn't been slashed to the bone. WHICH IT HAS FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF NHS TRUSTS IN ENGLAND.

kazzy
Does that VAT really cover the cost of treating lifelong obesity-related illnesses? Things like diabetes are incredibly expensive to control

I wonder how their contributions to the exchequer compares to paying VAT of ski gear and sports wear, for example?

Either way, it doesn't come close to the 70% of tax paid by smokers so you can't really make a like for like comparison

Maybe if we didn't have so many bean counters, and over paid head elfs, we could afford to do more.

Nurses need homes to live in, as do doctors, so build some, and make it so the medical staff want to train,NHS hospital or repay your grants, loans if you jump to the Agencey.

Most of all why can't there be just one big NHS group who buy and then resell at no profit all the consumables the NHS use...if Tesco can get a pack of pills to us for 50p, why does the NHS cost £7 for the same item...

No, No, No.

The NHS needs to be fixed before more money is thrown into it.

A re-evaluation of what it does & how it does it is needed, we can't keep throwing money into the bottomless pit....

I have private healthcare but I would happily pay another 2pc in tax to fully fund an NHS.

It wouldn't. Labour raised NIC twice to "save the NHS" and trebled spending on it, but it still wasn't "saved". Your 2% this year will be pissed away, meaning another 2% will be needed next year, and in 5 years time, tax will have gone up by 10% and the NHS will still be in dire straits. Throwing money at it without radical reform isn't the answer.

So maybe we should all become obese smokers and drinkers who do dangerous sports, then we'd fund our own treatment + provide a bit over in taxes paid, then the NHS would be in profit!

(Plus we'd all die young, so no more geriatric care either!)

I think some kind of user pays system will come in the uk, with free services for those who can’t afford it and heavily subsidised if you can, topped up by not compulsory insurance . Having had a few encounters with Australian Medicare (including for operations and hospital stay as well as routine GP appointments, prescriptions etc now I have found the Australian system much more user friendly and more importantly responsive than the NHS. I pay for some things. But it’s not the end of the world. The admin is seemless with a phone app for uploading bills and getting reimbursed by the government the next day. Insurers talk to the state system and co-ordinate further payments leaving you with a few bits and bobs of out of pocket expenses - a recent operation I had to pay about $300 for about $3,500 worth of treeament. GP consultation appointments I can usually get (free) within an hour , anywhere I want - not limited to a home GP. My local medical centre is open 7am-10pm, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. If I popped up there now (8pm) I’d likely see a doc within 30 mins. If I wanted to see my “own” GP, I might wait a day. When I broke a limb a couple years ago, I first presented to the local public hospital A and E who of course patched me up. I waited 15 minutes before I was attended to by doctors, including senior reg, was x rayd and in a plaster cast in under an hour. On a Saturday evening. Public hospital offered to do a required op ( bad break) for free, and keep me in , but asked if I had private insurance. I had, the registrar quickly got on the phone to a consultant at the local private hospital - I was booked in and treated as soon as ready for operation.
I was extremely anxious to leave the precious NHS when first moved here to a system where you “pay a bit “ and took a little while to get my head round it - we are so used in the UK to not interacting with any of the admin side of healthcare, we never see the costs, there is this enormous beaurocracy. Seriously I know it won’t happen in the UK as paying anything is seen as an anathema and the “death of the health service” but having experienced a different system so far I think what we have here has been a delight to deal with.

A few years ago a close friend in the UK died of admittedly a fairly rare (but by no means unknown) disease at quite a young age. They’d been to their NHS GP with concerns. No blood tests ordered after several visits. They died in hospital not long after. I honestly believe had they been in OZ, where blood tests are done as a matter of course, and often organised be next day, where referrals to specialists are routinely and very quickly organised, due to the nature of our “pay a bit” system , they might have been alive today.

People need to look at all alternatives when considering the future of funding the NHS. Paying some of your own money for some services is not the end of the world.

I think more GP surgeries will go to the system ours has - no ore-bookable appointments. You call at 7.30 on the day and you get an appointment that day. Occasionally you have to phone back the next day. Their missed appointments issue has practically gone.

However, it's massively inconvenient for anyone who works as you've no idea what time your appointment is going to be.

My suggestion: GPs divide their days into into two types of blocks, one containing the most popular appointment times (maybe start and end of the day) and the other containing the rest. Offer appointment times in the popular blocks for a charge, and free appointments to the first n people to book themselves into the other blocks.

My suggestion: GPs divide their days into into two types of blocks, one containing the most popular appointment times (maybe start and end of the day) and the other containing the rest. Offer appointment times in the popular blocks for a charge, and free appointments to the first n people to book themselves into the other blocks.

Very well said. It's this kind of thinking outside the box that is desperately needed throughout the NHS. In lots of other areas, you pay more for convenience, added value services, etc., so why not the NHS?

I thought the main cost was the increasingly aging population and the shrinking tax paying pool?

I dont agree with charges for drunks/druggies etc. as there are socioeconomic reasons for many addictions. More education & community care would be good.

Plus if you charge a overweight person, do you charge the person who didn’t wear a helmet when cycling?

The same with missing appointments, it is such a waste but the groups that miss these appointments regularly are probably going to be from vulnerable sectors anyway.

Like all the other threads on this the answer is not as simple as the OP suggests.

It’s not enough it would need to be around 5% and all that money would need to go towards the NHS

Many people can’t afford that and any increase in income tax will result in other costs rising

Will our wages increase to cover these extra costs

I agree that we have expected good public services and pay relatively low taxes for this

But when wages are stagnant prices are rising in the shops and many families are just getting by becuase of tax credits how can that change it can’t without many people suffering

We had our chance, we made our choice. Not a choice I agreed with,
but sometimes life really is that simple.