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?

The NHS has to move away from a service where its staff think it is free and they are therefore doing the public a favour. There must also be a shift re equality and diversity. A shift from a service that favours every minority group whilst forgetting the rump of its users and which has departed from the tenets of basic courtesy and customer service and where one exists that appears to treat all women as 2nd class citizens - particularly evident in maternity care and post natal care. If women suffer as a result of difficult births there has to be easily accessed support for urinary and faecal incontinence that sometimes emerge 20 years later. Far more emphasis on truthful outcomes and acceptance that the cost of a caesarean might not be more expensive in the longer term. All women should be afforded sufficient respect for informed decisions to take place.

Agree TheoMeo, that is certainly part of the answer.

Perhaps if we recouped some of the fraudulently acquired contracts that didn’t deliver during Covid and found the £39 billion from track and trace we could divert it into training, recruitment, estates and equipment.

Less managers more nurses ..... except most managers are health care professionals. Would you do away with matrons? What about clinical nurse specialists? Maybe get rid of site managers who maintain flow through acute hospitals? Maybe in community hospitals the nurse prescribers could be gotten rid of?

It’s rubbish to say there are too many managers - not sure who is considered unnecessary?

And to add....95% of people are happy or very happy with the NHS services they, or their relatives use.

Only if it was overhauled, and only if everyone paid. Not just the under 65's

You think over 65s don’t pay tax? I wish you were right! I’d happily pay more if there was a complete review and reform and if the tax increase was ringfenced.

Absolutely Yes.

I think any additional investment should go either side of the NHS, so to public health and social care. If both of those were properly funded and run, there worked be an immense knock on effect on the NHS. Healthy children growing up into healthy adults, unhealthy adults becoming healthy adults, and elderly people behind properly supported and cared for.

My household already pays over 100k a year in tax and NI plus pay for private health cover. I wouldn’t want to pay anymore.

The NHS has extremely low management costs compared to similar organisations worldwide and other sectors. The idea that it's over managed is just a tabloid bugbear, they have to find something to write about.

I find a lot of NHS waste is actually caused by that undermanagement. Systemically underfunding admin and management means that systems are leaky, where efficiencies slip through the net because no one has the time to sort them out, and there is a culture of rushing at the expense of taking time to get things right first time.

I am so disappointed with the NHS. Between myself and my husband we have paid eye-watering amounts of tax, of which about £8k a year was identified as funding the NHS when we got those tax statements.

Yet my husband has had major back problems then associated severe mental health problems. On both counts the NHS has been completely useless, leaving him stranded and without any treatment, help or support. It's been almost criminally negligent.

It's completely changed my perception. We are paying for an idea rather than a reality.

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

Really? I live in France. The doctors at our GP practice love treating UK patients because they are so pathetically gratefully for the fast and efficient service here. French cancer outcomes are streets ahead of the UK, the wait to see a consultant is minimal, and you receive scan results the same day or within 24 hours at worst in our experience. I can honestly say I have never come across anyone (medical or otherwise) who looks up to the NHS.

I happily would but the Nhs needs a complete overhaul and the budget needs to be better spent. There’s a lot of departments that need sorting out . I’ve used the nhs a lot during covid and not had an issue but I know a fair few who’s appointments have been cancelled or delayed and treatments were badly needed.

No, we couldn’t afford to pay any more tax.

@RosesAndHellebores The NHS has to move away from a service where its staff think it is free and they are therefore doing the public a favour.

Nail on the head. Far too many NHS staff don't give a stuff about their "service" because of that attitude. Too many have the attitude of "I'll do what I want, when I want to do it" when it comes to patient care. Unfortunately, the staff who DO care and try to do their best don't seem to have any avenues to report/challenge their colleagues who don't so the underlying problems never get challenged.

Blair/Brown increased NIC twice to "save the NHS" which helped funding the trebling of it's funding. Guess what? There was no real improvement as so much of the money was wasted. That's what happens when you use additional funding to give pay rises to GPs to work fewer hours!!

I don't have the slightest trust in any government to spend taxation money wisely, or reasonably.
So a specific tax just for the NHS would never work, and such taxes are nearly always not levied by governments. Even National Insurance which was supposed to be for specific causes is just now a general tax.

@user1497207191

Blair/Brown increased NIC twice to "save the NHS" which helped funding the trebling of it's funding. Guess what? There was no real improvement as so much of the money was wasted. That's what happens when you use additional funding to give pay rises to GPs to work fewer hours!!

That’s not true though. Public satisfaction with the NHS was at its highest under the Blair government. Waiting lists were at their lowest and there was less health inequality.

@user1497207191

Blair/Brown increased NIC twice to "save the NHS" which helped funding the trebling of it's funding. Guess what? There was no real improvement as so much of the money was wasted. That's what happens when you use additional funding to give pay rises to GPs to work fewer hours!!

That isn’t entirely true. I was working in the NHS when that money came through, it was accompanied by targets - waiting times plummeted for both elective and emergency care, our A&E waiting room was actually empty at times. We got rid of mixed sex wards, which are now back again.

The changes to the GP contract were bonkers and the continuance of PFI (which Major started) was poorly thought through but they were the best years the NHS has ever had.

No, it's a big deep money pit. I also already pay to see a private doctor and dentist and private healthcare insurance. If you want to take the money I pay for private services and guarantee me the same standard of care I'd maybe say yes but I know this wouldn't be the case.

@TheoMeo

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

I agree with this. I think there should be better funding of all the services that intervene to stop further damage, so anything that gives kids better life chances, helps people rehabilitate when their lives have gone wrong, and of course mental health services for all ages. Surely this kind of thing is cost effective - e.g. much better to put prisoners through really well-designed and funded rehab programmes than deal with repeat offending, not just the cost of prison and the criminal justice system, but the cost to victims.

Absolutely not.

Just throwing more money at the NHS will do nothing to solve the fundamental structural issues which make the system dysfunctional at the moment. We need to learn from other countries which have universal healthcare delivered by hybrid public/ private systems and achieve much better results than the UK’s monolithic, overly politicised system.

@AgeLikeWine

Absolutely not.

Just throwing more money at the NHS will do nothing to solve the fundamental structural issues which make the system dysfunctional at the moment. We need to learn from other countries which have universal healthcare delivered by hybrid public/ private systems and achieve much better results than the UK’s monolithic, overly politicised system.

It’s interesting idea. Which one offers universal healthcare with similar outcomes for similar funding level?

Obesity has been linked with more than one million hospital admissions in a year, with figures doubling in five years, NHS
From the Telegraph this month.
Money should go to encouraging people to exercise.

Like others have said I'd be really happy to pay quite a lot more if I thought it would actually go towards making the NHS more fit for purpose.

But in truth I think there are a lot of issues around bureaucracy and I feel like any extra money might just be absorbed into an inefficient system or scooped up by Boris Johnson and his cronies :(

Interesting about the Blair years. I had my first baby in 94 and second in 98. Maternity services locally seemed to deteriorate in that period. Also pre 2000 I could book a GP apt in advance but it was the Blair target of 24 hours for GP apts that introduced the ring on the morning fiasco which was impossible for commuters/school run mums at that time when not everyone had a mobile phone.

Grommets weren't available on the NHS in 1996 for DS and neither were they in 1999 for DD.

I think the data was massaged in this period. And let's not forget the bureaucratic tier of PCTs and PFI turning into a juggernaut. I can't remember who was responsible for the sweeping away of SRN/SEN grades but that did nothing to help patient care.

There are several myths and tropes about the NHS.
The biggest is that other healthcare systems are more effective and efficient for the same costs. This is completely objectively not true. The OECD has routinely published spending per head population
www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/876d99c3-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/876d99c3-en
We don't spend as much as many many developed nations. If you also look at spend on social care and income inequalities this too is an issue
<a class="break-all" href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1200/RR1252/RAND_RR1252.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj-6-2epeTwAhWTgVwKHXbpCMAQFjAUegQIDhAC&usg=AOvVaw2vxnrZNXtFHaO_CMuO0_nc&cshid=1621927214702" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR1200/RR1252/RAND_RR1252.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwj-6-2epeTwAhWTgVwKHXbpCMAQFjAUegQIDhAC&usg=AOvVaw2vxnrZNXtFHaO_CMuO0_nc&cshid=1621927214702
There are structural issues, we tend to commission in siloes, we are not holistic we are often led by powerful vested interests...There are clearly issues. But we also don't find health and social care to anything like the levels other countries do....