To think the NHS will eventually have to be privatised ?

[Felixsmama]

When the NHS was founded 1 in 2 people died before the age of 65. It's now 1 in 8, the last 10 years of people's lives can be spent with multiple co-morbid conditions which are expensive to treat and keep under control. The NHS wasn't designed for what it's not having to do, we have an aging population. Shouldn't we start to have conversations about what going forward our health service should look like? There's multiple models not just the US one.

Just putting corporation tax up to the average in the G7 would more than cover the costs. Taxes don’t have to come from just people.

It won't be now because Labour will win the next election.

I think it's fear of copying the American system, which we have in so many other areas and rarely for the better.

A lot of independent schools provide chargeable, taxable private insurance to their staff as an optional benefit. I've paid just under £100 a month for the last 5 years and have had three operations paid for, minus a small excess, arranged for school holidays. The cover disregards previous illnesses/conditions. I think I'm possibly in surplus...

Of course it is a good deal for the insurance company as we have one of the youngest teaching workforces in the OECD. If they were all like me they'd make no profit.

I think £100 a month is affordable for a lot of professionals and if the healthcare workforce issues can be sorted out, companies could be encouraged, maybe even subsidised, to provide this.

I had to use the doctor in France last week. It was 25EUR, payable on the spot. That wasn't the surprising bit - it was being able to get through on the phone straight away. That was amazing! My UK surgery are fine but it takes 45 min to get through.

There are some revolting people on this thread who clearly know nothing about the vast needs of patients who need healthcare.

As an NHS worker, I don't know a single person who would carry on in healthcare if it were privatised.

Threads like these make me want to just give up being health professionals all together and go and live in a cave.

There are some revolting people on this thread who clearly know nothing about the vast needs of patients who need healthcare.
As an NHS worker, I don't know a single person who would carry on in healthcare if it were privatised

Its called health fascism. Only the lean, active and young deserve health care. All the rest with athritis who can’t exercise, or with mental health issues with prescription meds that make you eat non stop, or alcoholics who try and fail to give up should be disregarded. Or the obese with eating disorders, although it’s fine to treat anorexia as another eating disorder.

Eugenics is the word. Just like Hitler. No one disabled, or mentally ill, or struggling in any way can have treatment. Makes me feel🤢

I think privatisation has caused more problems in other areas (energy?) . It isn't the answer.

Get rid of the alcoholics as well! Did you know that they get extra benefits so they can afford to drink? Crazy!

How would privatising it improve the situation? Just means poor people will be allowed to die while the rich get treated. Doesn't sound great to me.

I am proud of the NHS and the fact that we can treat people regardless of wealth/religion/ culture- I really do not want a privatised system, it is not an equal system.

Every time I see a thread like this, I assume it's been planted by the Tories to gauge opinion.

If it hasn't, why are you doing their dirty work, OP?

It's been purposefully run into the ground for the last 20 years so it can be privatised. We'll have American in style health insurance (well the few that qualify) by the end of the decade.

The worry is that if it is privatised the people making the decision will be the people who financially benefit from screwing us all over. The same people who financially benefit the younger the rest of us paupers die.

All the Tories care about is how to line their pockets and the private school chums pockets.

This this this 🫥

I think the best option would be some kind of hybrid system as PP above have suggested.

The NHS is on the brink of collapse but nor do we want an American system. Hopefully something can be done soon as the current situation is not sustainable

world101.cfr.org/global-era-issues/global-health/how-health-care-works-around-world this is an informative article for anyone interested in what options are out there. It's not as simple as "NHS pays for everything" versus "privatise everything, poor die."

That's the kind of narrative that means we can never learn anything from other countries.

I don't think the current system where you have to do so much advocacy for yourself serves anyone very well.

Number two looks like a great option

I think everyone should pay a small amount towards healthcare for every appointment and treatment just like we do with dental care and also ensure that no foreigners get free treatment. Need a complete overhaul with management, less of them and salary should be capped at 100k. NHS is badly abused by people, especially from people from lower social communities.

We need to value our NHS more.

Far better to prioritise things that benefit the majority of the population over unnecessary projects that support a minority. An example would be to plough the £106 Billion that is the current estimate for HS2 into the NHS. Meanwhile its estimated every person sent to Rwanda will cost £30,000 per person. (£120 million so far ear marked for the scheme).

Keeping people who should be dead alive

What are the criteria for that please?

Keeping women who bleed in childbirth alive?
Keeping a diabetic alive?
Keeping a child who jumped into a lake alive?
Or just older people
?

Do you have an age at which you would like the population killed ?

The NHS is good value for money. If we want better we need to all be prepared to pay for it through higher taxes. Privatisation is rarely the right answer. Someone mentioned raising corporation tax, which would help fund improvements.

I haven't seen a single poster on this thread who was not advocating for universal health insurance and where the premiums of the poor would be paid for by the state. Maybe there were a few I missed but that's not the consensus. There are doctors and nurses in Singapore, Germany, Switzerland, France, Australia and I don't think they are any less noble than NHS staff. They do the same job. Except they can help more people and achieve better outcomes because the system actually works.

@onthe we would not have a system like those though. We would have a system where the MPs friends could make the most money possible.

And explain to me why adding a while extra layer of bureaucracy that an insurance scheme would make necessary is good value for money?
In my job I try and get rid of bureaucracy and streamline services. I have never understood why adding more bureaucracy could be seen as a good thing.

Another day, another thread. Lots of hysterics about NHS not being funded properly. Yet no one, not one person here or anywhere else has been able to say what is the right amount of funding.

Instead of generic, meaningless, regurgitated words about ‘underfunded NHS’, why not question how that funding is used. The UK spends well above the OECD average on healthcare. We spent 12% of our GDP on the NHS last year. How much is enough? 25%, how about 100%? What will the shrieking hysterics do when they find out that more spending doesn’t buy you better results. Just look at the US.