Would you pay an additional tax for the NHS?

[Whatisthis543]

I’m torn on this one, surely our taxes should cover a well funded NHS but it seems that they don’t...

Is that systematic I.e too much bureaucracy and poor allocation of resources (within the trusts and elsewhere) or is there genuinely not enough money with an ageing population and rapid growth?

If the nurses want a rise I think we should all vote and pay more tax , I think the vote would be yes .however I would want the nhs trust system overhauled . I would want to know the money is going to the correct area .

@Misty9

Good point .

No. I worked in the nhs for 15 years and now work on agency.
Pros of nhs work: a decent amount of paid annual leave, paid sick leave, paid carer’s leave, impossible to lose your job/ hours.
Cons: lower pay per hour (though not much lower at all if paid leave is averaged out as part of the wage).
Pros of agency work (and the reasons I had to leave the nhs): less bullying, flexibility around hours to manage childcare, shift pattern doesn’t change from 7h shifts to 13h shifts with 2 days notice.
Cons of agency work: no paid annual leave (this is included in the hourly rate hence the misconception agency staff get paid more), no paid sick leave, no covid isolation pay, no guaranteed work/ hours.
On balance I’d have stayed in the nhs if a) childcare was available 7am-9pm or b) the flexible working/ family friendly/ anti discrimination/ anti bullying policies were followed.
A pay rise would have made no difference to me. I don’t think pay should be the priority: staff support and work life balance should be.
I’m worse off financially now than when I worked in the nhs and would resent being taxed to pay more to people doing the same job as me but with more perks (and either no children or enough family support to manage the inflexibility)

No. It's crap and its incompetence has caused the deaths of multiple people I care about.

I too remember £13 billion NHS debt being just written off by Hancock at beginning of first lockdown. The NHS is wasteful and inefficient. I have no idea why patients get free (disgusting) food. Far better to make patients pay for good food. When my dh was in with fractured spine as a vegetarian by time trolly got to him he ended up with cheese sandwich several days as main meal despite ordering other meals, they just never turned up. Yet in cafeteria meals for visitors quite nice and several options. The management structure is overpaid in NHS. Junior doctors still do too many hours for safety and too many agency nurses not allowed to do full range of jobs.

I'd happily pay more if we could move to a European style system. Not for the current system though.

I’d pay more if the NHS was sorted out. Not in its current state.

I wouldn't pay more for the current system it's like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in.
It's more about the way it's run and the way people abuse it thats the problem. But people are constantly told by some parties it's down to funding and every believes it.
There a complete culture of negativity and frustration that eats away at the NHS .

I think UK taxes need to rise tbh. Chronic underfunding of healthcare, education and social housing all cause huge (and interrelated) social problems.

I’m not overly attached to the NHS model though. I do like the German system but they pay more tax than we do.

Only if it was overhauled, and only if everyone paid. Not just the under 65's.
After over thirty years of working in the NHS we also need difficult conversations about how long to throw everything at prolonging life, often with very little quality or poor likelihood of outcomes.

No, i barely use it as it is! Short-sighted I know, but I feel like I’m funding everyone else.

I'd rather have a private system and pay private medical insurance.

Like many, many others here ultimately, I would want to see changes.
I have had previous experience in working on refurbishment projects within the NHS. Seeing the tenders that were accepted, where the profit margin was much higher than private, residential works, which were more common for the company I worked for, was quite saddening. If that is happening in all hospitals around the country, it would explain some of the black hole in NHS funding.

I'd atleast like to see some of those funds being spent on the people who keep the NHS running.

But yes. I would pay additional tax, quite happily

I would. But then I'm that rare breed, a high earning card carrying Labour voter, a believer in big state, redistributive taxation.

I generally think people like DH and I don't pay enough tax, particularly on what I would call "unearned" income.

Isn't it called NI?

I would start by taxing the likes of Amazon until the pips squeak personally.

No. We are already struggling financially due to job losses & covid-19.

Basic food stuff is gone up in price but our wages have basically decreased from 18 months ago.

I am sure lots of people are in similar positions, you just can't squeeze the working population indefinitely.

Not without root and branch reform.

This always comes up and myths persist.

On the funding it has the NHS is about the most efficient healthcare service in the world. It is few at point of care for everyone regardless of income. We pay far, far less than those countries offered up as more efficient or effective.

That is the choice really. Invest and pay more as virtually every other developed nation does or accept it as a country we cannot keep up.

The NHS delivers an incredible service for most people most of the time, it has comparable (but lesser) outcomes to countries where they have two or three times the funding.

The chronic underfunding has created lots of issues that are not obvious st first glance. The Tory promise of forty new hospitals isn’t real; it’s the emperors new clothes. The truth is hospitals with ancient buildings that are falling down and unfit for modern healthcare - particularly in a post pandemic world.

Recruitment in many specialities is very challenging because of the appalling way junior doctors are treated and the requirement to move around with very little control about where you work. In palliative medicine, for example, there were something like ten specialist training posts nationally (despite it being a growth area and cutting edge medicine). Radiology is often now outsourced to NZ or Sth Africa because of a shortage of radiologists. Psychiatry is failing it’s patients because there aren’t sufficient beds, clinic, doctors or nurses.

Those failings are not the fault of the NHS - blame should be levied at those who asset stripped and incision huge cuts. The government is where the inefficiency and failings are happening. The NHS is being scapegoated to enable selling off without fuss.

Having worked in health, NHS and Social Care, local council but essentially doing the same job I think the NHS is badly organised and has too many managers. The structure is very hierarchical and this leads to inefficiency. As councils are so cash strapped I see a massive change from being like that many years ago to being quite lean, creative and innovative organisations now. Trying to get anything done by NHS is like ploughing through treacle. In terms of Covid, most NHS services like children’s and mental health just stopped locally. We (social care) were much more able to carry on providing services as the council’s leadership was much, much better. Everywhere is different though and in other areas it is probably the reverse.

I would support this. I'd rather pay higher taxes for better services overall - education, police, NHS, transport, etc. I'm a basic rate taxpayer, not on a high wage, but I'd pay more for the security of knowing those services are well-funded. I don't understand how we've moved away from this being a widely accepted thing. In principle I don't really agree with having separately ringfenced taxes - I just think we (individuals and companies) should pay enough tax to provide decent services for everyone.

TheNHS model is one of excellence and one that is looked up by many countries including France as its recognised as such.

The issue isn’t money as such although it is indirectly. It’s the massively high vacancies levels and reliance on agencies as a result. Staff have more and more expectation of services running around their needs. Unfortunately, that ends up with a service that isn’t efficient. Staff leave to go to agencies so they can work under their own terms. That means that the service is still inefficient and even more costly.

The department of health tried to introduce terms by which Trusts can only use so many agency staff and only those who meet certain standards. This was supposed to result in staff not getting any work and coming back to the nhs, but it hasn’t really worked as many of these staff were older and just retired.

The new strategy is to recruit abroad. Nurses and doctors who are not as demanding with flexibility meaning services can function to its best efficiency. Brexit has clearly put a spanner to this.

Additional money could maybe mean recruiting more staff despite it not being required but allows more PT work, and flexibility on hours, evening, nights and weekend work, although when this has been tried, they have found that all the staff demand the same terms, young parents want 9 to 3pm shift, no evenings or night or weekend, whilst older staff want PT Tuesday to Thursday.

A bit exaggerating of course, but the gist of it is that it is getting harder and harder to recruit British staff and most hospital and services have to operate short staffed therefore impacting on patient care.

@Thankssomuch

Already paying 40% so that feels like enough.

I doubt it - 40% tax is a marginal tax only on the part of your income that qualifies

Perhaps we should put more money into SS and prison services and pull up those at the bottom first. Then less drain on services.

Not until money is raised in other ways.
Charge for missed appointments.
Staff overhaul with basically less managers / more nurses.
Self service appointment bookings and repeat prescriptions, freeing up staff for other value added tasks.
Simple things such as stopping to send letter confirmation for appointments (maybe opt in). I booked an appt in person, asked the receptionist not to send a letter as I wrote it down, she said she couldn’t «stop the letter». Imagine the money wasted!
Very difficult to charge for missed appointments.
If you charge 25 year old John who missed the bus, would you also charge for 75 year old Doris who woke late? Probably not
I would charge them both. If you know you can’t pay you’ll make every effort to either turn up or cancel at reasonable notice. Everything else works this way!