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?

Yes I’d pay more and we should if we want a good service, the NHS is one of the cheapest healthcare systems in the G7.

@Allispretty

Do people not realise that national insurance pays for the nhs?

National Insurance primarily pays for pensions and some working age benefits.

The NHS is primarily funded by general taxation, with a small contribution from National Insurance.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_Service_(England)

“Primarily funded by the government from general taxation (plus a small amount from National Insurance contributions),”

Per head

I'd rather a pay per use for non emergency service.

We won’t need to: as of 11pm there will be another £350million going in to it won’t there? I’m sure I read that on a bus somewhere.

However, yes I would if it went into actual healthcare- not expensive management consultants and the like. Wasting money needs to be addressed (based on the recounts of a friend who sold clinical supplies- she would offer to review expenditure and find more cost effective supplies, she was invariably turned down). The government has reduced spending on the NHS massively and this should be reversed.

I’d happily pay to see a GP in the style of the French system.

There are a lot of myths about how the NHS is run perpetuated by Tory governments. Oh and some HCP with a grudge against management (I'm a doctor by trade).

The truth is that the healthcare system can't run without the management and the administrators doing their bit. I'd like to see the hospital where doctors and nurses are responsible for everything. It would be a mess.

Our health service is actually one of the most efficient, innovative and lean in the world. It's is under managed and actually needs more back room staff in order to keep everything running properly but cutting administrators and this so called red tape (which in my experience is generally there to ensure patient safety and meet financial, procurement and commissioning regulations as required by the public sector) makes better headlines for the right wing press.

The NHS has been chronically underfunded and understaffed for oh, about 10 years now. It has been reorganised at least twice in that time and we are seeing ever more proof that the govt wants to break it up and sell to the lowest bidder.

Politicians can't stop meddling in healthcare, education and the rest of the public sector. They are the ones to blame, not the poor bloody staff.

Yes, I'd pay more tax to keep,our NHS.

Interesting what @Horseyhorsey3 says. I went for an interview many, many years ago for a job in NHS procurement. Didn’t get the job because one of the questions was “you need to order some tables for a day room, the ward manager wants a particular one at £x. There is a much cheaper alternative so which would you choose?” I said the cheaper one and was told no, I get the one I’m told to get! It was 4 times the cost from memory for an almost identical item.

I can understand that decision for medical equipment but a bloody table!

A couple of people have beaten to me to it, in pointing out that we already have such a tax. I think my payslips in the late 1980's listed NHI (National Health Insurance) and NI separately, before they were combined.

Having said that, I believe the link between the amounts collected and the amounts paid out have been broken, in particular so NHS could get extra money from general taxation. So we should probably just abolish NI as a separate tax and increase income tax to compensate, simplifying the whole tax system.

How about the mps and house of Lords all take a pay cut and stop giving themselves pay rises and put the money into our NHS instead?

I already pay more tax for living in Scotland then colleagues in England so already feel like I am paying more!

The NHS is fantastic but also spends a lot of money on things it could avoid if it was staffed properly such as sending people to private hospitals to keep waiting list targets at the right level!

I would if it was remodelled and more fit for purpose.

I never considered it before (I know it’s really little) but all maternity notes are different and all have different systems depending where you I. The country. If you move from one area you have to photocopy them, hand back your old notes and get new notes in your new area. Honestly this blew my mind, it can’t be efficient. I bet there is loads more cases of things like this.

I agree with so many here -
ComtesseDeSpair
BillyElliotsLeftShoe
Griselda1
emilybrontescorsett
1FootInTheRave
arethereanyleftatall
TheDoctorDances
littlebillie
Bathroom12345
natalienewname
Horseyhorsey3
Xyzzzzz
Canwecancel2020

The whole system needs a massive overhaul, and that needs to be done in conjunction with social care, care for the elderly, and mental health provision in the country.
The NHS is such a wonderful ideal, but there are so many inefficiencies that I'm sure all of us could list. Pouring more money in to it isn't the answer on its own.

The majority of funding comes from general taxation.

The NHS does an amazing job despite being severely underfunded. If taxes were increased for those earning over £100K and continued to rise progressively, wealthy people would still be wealthy and our healthcare system could be better funded.

In countries with taxation much higher than here, e.g. Scandinavia, citizens generally - when surveyed - prefer to keep higher taxes, knowing it guarantees a higher standard of living across the board. It means no billionaires, but also no food banks. And excellent healthcare.

I would rather spend my money on private healthcare to take pressure off the nhs

We shouldn’t need to now. Boris promised the nhs £350m a week after Brexit and had it plastered on his bus. So it should be sorted, yes? If they’re still short after that they can ask all those mates of theirs they gave the billions to (for test & trace and ppe etc that never materialised or worked) for OUR money back.

@SecretSpAD my local hospital has three receptionist.
The first is by the door and they send you to the second who then sends you onto the first. We are in a pretty rural area and the hospital is a small one.
I cannot understand this model whatsoever. I've lived in several areas and seen these kind of inefficiencies across the nhs.
One of the doctors I once saw spoke such little English that I actually had to give up trying to explain what was wrong and ended up suffering consequences because it was too embarrassing an appointment to relive.

Too many people that shouldn't be employed are and the money should be more used to pay the right people higher salaries. I would say most people in the U.K. have experienced this unfortunately. And I don't like saying things like 'if it weren't for the nhs my dad would still be alive' etc because genuinely if we had the German model he'd also still be alive and probably have not ended up in an emergency situation because of waiting lists (cancer)

The nhs gains such support because it feels like it's free. But it's only free to those that don't pay into it. For the rest it's a very inefficient and slow model and if improved via copying superior models would actually improve as well as save lives.

@SecretSpAD

There are a lot of myths about how the NHS is run perpetuated by Tory governments. Oh and some HCP with a grudge against management (I'm a doctor by trade).

The truth is that the healthcare system can't run without the management and the administrators doing their bit. I'd like to see the hospital where doctors and nurses are responsible for everything. It would be a mess.

Our health service is actually one of the most efficient, innovative and lean in the world. It's is under managed and actually needs more back room staff in order to keep everything running properly but cutting administrators and this so called red tape (which in my experience is generally there to ensure patient safety and meet financial, procurement and commissioning regulations as required by the public sector) makes better headlines for the right wing press.

The NHS has been chronically underfunded and understaffed for oh, about 10 years now. It has been reorganised at least twice in that time and we are seeing ever more proof that the govt wants to break it up and sell to the lowest bidder.

Politicians can't stop meddling in healthcare, education and the rest of the public sector. They are the ones to blame, not the poor bloody staff.

Yes, I'd pay more tax to keep,our NHS.

Absolutely this.

I think a flat fee for GP visits should be paid for out-of-pocket by patients. These aren't so expensive that they need to be covered by insurance. I guess there could be an exemption for people on benefits, but an alternative to that would be simply to create a debt that might be enforceable in cases where people could pay, whether immediately or at a later date.

While this would raise some revenue, the main benefit would be to make people think before they consume resources. The same rule doesn't apply to the majority of the rest of healthcare, because in other circumstances it's not the patient who decides if they need the service.

No. The entire system needs a massive overhaul. Currently you can throw as much money as you want at it and yet it deteriorates more and more.

Bring back matrons who run the wards and make decisions. Get rid of these very high paid directors and managers who are not involved in healthcare at all yet reap the most rewards. Overhaul the systems as waiting times, mistakes, unclean hospitals are all massively not ok in the current system. It needs to be streamlined and made far more efficient.

A personal example of mine when i was rushed to hospital last year i sat and waited for an ambulance for way over an hour when i was at high risk of bleeding to death. The ambulance told me they had to sit and wait for more ambulances as paramedics now have to sit with patients inside the hospital until they are handed over. Then once in hospital really i only needed an overnight stay for transfusion/blood clotting medication ivs in which i had 5. They kept me for 3 days because no one had access to a scanner on the weekend so i took up a bed for 3 days i didnt need because the system was so ineffective. My aunt lost her vision suddenly through an eye hemorrhage and was told again nothing available at weekends so come back next week. Why are services stopped on weekends across different trusts? Why are some hospitals incredibly dirty? Why are patients routinely ignored in beds for hours and even days with empty ivs and full catheters?

The NHS is broken and instead of fighting to fix and change it people are too shit scared to slate it so scream about how we will end up with American system.

No way. Having worked in the NHS the absolute shit show it is is nothing to do with not having enough money but more to do with being run by idiots.

more tax...isnt this what we pay National Insurance for? Unfortunately thats just another rebadged tax, not really for its intended purpose, just adding to the coffers generally

Also the nhs is all run differently by different people with very y different rules and different expenses being paid. Its a joke of a system.

If taxes were increased for those earning over £100K

So you think 3 people in every 100 should pay for the healthcare of the other 97, in addition to paying for their own?

I think a flat levy on ever pound earned above the mininum wage would be a better way to do it. (And that is more or less the way it works at the moment, so if we want to collect more, rates of NI and income tax just need to increase.)

The MPs should have taken a 20% pay cut, as they forced most of the country to do the same. They could have donated it to their sacred NHS. And it's ironic that because the government have decimated business and industry, tax revenue will be so much lower.

No!! Pay so much already!
The NHS needs a big overhaul to make the use of money more efficient.