If everyone was taxed an extra pound, would that save the NHS?

[EddyF]

Might be a silly question but if you don’t ask, you don’t learn!

I have just a post elsewhere (not MN) where people are discussing their wait time to be seen at A&E and it’s quite shocking.

I think people would be In favour of paying a slight tax increase of a minimal amount such as £1/1.50 from tax to try and fix the NHS. Is this unrealistic?

I have attended a hospital in the US, and the experience was such a stark contrast to the feel of hospitals here. I know obviously because the US is not ‘free’ like the NHS. I just remember it being like a spa service.

I don’t think it would be enough. One of the biggest issues facing the NHS is the lack of suitable social care rather than the NHS plus issues of poverty and deprivation puts more pressure on the NHS. It’s a whole society issue.

£1 how often? A week/month/year?

Nope, they'd fritter it on waste and corruption like they do with the rest of my tax.

In Scotland we are already paying more tax for the NHS £100s to £1,000s and it's just as shit here.

What do you mean? £1 how often? There’s only about 32 million income tax payers in the UK.

If anything they should reduce tax. We are taxed far too much in this country

No I doubt it. It costs 2,5 billion to run the NHS annually.

there are 32 million adults working in the uk,. So a pound is 32 million, doesn’t touch the sides.

That would fund less than a day. Social care needs to be drastically expanded by the government not private companies. Maybe taken into the NHS or new health and social care trusts created that work together. Then the NHS itself needs to focus on prevention.

Might help if richer people paid the same rate of National insurance as poorer people.

www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay

Rubbish. We have low taxation compared to many countries with decent public services and welfare provision.
But what you actually mean is "I don't give a shit about my fellow citizens, just my money". Bet you use public services yourself though because that's different innit.

I'd happily pay that but..

It's more complicated than that. Successsive govts have tried to sort things out and if it was simple, they would have made an impact. Basically, we expect an enormous amount from the NHS nowadays - far, far more than it was ever set up to provide. As new treatments are discovered, it becomes more and more expensive to pay for these developments and our expectations (I think) are sometimes unrealistic. Recently I've had a mole thing (not malignant) removed and I've paid for that - I'm sure it wasn't as much as the actual cost) and that's fine by me - it wasn't a health risk, just a cosmetic procedure.

Also, it's not just a matter of chucking money - although that would help! The whole thing needs a huge re-structuring. Where to start? They need to get some really brain people (not politicians) including medics, scientists and other experts to have a damn good look - but not to take 5 years over it - and make some clear suggestions.

There's always a big political hoo-ha about having a 2 tier system, but I think that's OK - it gets some of the people off the waiting list (those who can pay) and clears the decks for those who can't. I've never understood the problem with this, but some people get very het up about it. It's like using the M6 Toll motorway - by paying you actually help with the congestion on the M6 itself. But I'm a pragmatist - not wedded to principles!

I think you would have to take in account that unless you are a higher rate taxpayer, it's pretty unlikely that you are making a net contribution in the first place.

Saving the NHS probably means higher tax for everyone, or cutting services, or paying for some others for insurance. The fact is people live far longer, have greater expectations and relatively few people now directly care for their parents in their dotage.

We are an ageing country. The NHS just shows how little people have considered what it means to live this long.

I honestly don't think the problem with the NHS is money. It's definitely not the only problem. It's almost had too much money so there's been no need to develop efficiency.

For example. DH had a long period of illness before his death, multiple hospital appointments, a letter sent to confirm each one, at a cost of what, £1 each for just the stationery and stamps, let alone the time. Now, people working in the system will tell me why it can't support any electronic communication, but it should.

My GP surgery's telephone are constantly engaged. You have to ring to get blood test results which must be many calls everyday. I have suggested they just email them all routinely. A member of staff could do it in one batch, much more efficient then taking all those calls and it would take pressure of their phone system, but no it can't be done. Maybe the system as it is can't do it, but there must be a way, there's just no will to change or improve things

I also think too much is left until it's bad enough before the NHS will treat, which means expensive or long term treatment when they do. E.g DS had an infected ingrown toenail. NHS don't operate on in grown toenails, here's some antibiotics, but it will keep recurring. So I got it done privately, £40. Left to the NHS DS would have been having regular GP appointments and prescriptions indefinitely, all for the want of a £40 procedure.

It needs a complete overhaul, not more cash thrown at a broken system.

They’ve tried throwing money at the nhs. It didn’t work because it got spent on “money saving” ideas like new it systems and closing hospitals/wards, reducing wage bills etc.

they need ground floor staff. Stop running on minimum staffing and build in resilience. Once that’s sorted things will improve, and people will have time to implement better practices.

No matter how much money we throw at the NHS, it will never be fixed. With a free at the point of delivery health service, there will be infinite demand for services while the ability to service that demand is limited by the money available.

Rather than throwing ever more money at the NHS and the people working for it, we need to define when it has achieved its objectives. It could be an average life expectancy of, say, 83. It could be a limit on the number of sick days taken by the working population. It could be any number of things. Only when the NHS can be successful against a clear goal, can it spend money on the niceties.

Otherwise you will have one person having a spar experience while having a hip operation, while someone else just doesn't get their cataracts fixed.

But just giving the NHS more money without it having an achievable goal will simply make matters worse.

I was more than happy to pay the extra NI payment knowing it would be ring-fenced (supposedly)

When that was removed I was surprised.

But I do agree that it seems there are more managers who don't actual have the ability to help people get better, and just create yet another level of admin for users to wade through.

£5 a month would give almost £2 billion.

I'd happily pay that. Happily. I'd pay double that if I knew it was going to front line services.

Maybe we should crowdfund!!

I pay quite enough tax in Scotland thanks

I also think we need to start looking at what, realistically the NHS can and can't do. There would have to be some unpopular choices but should things like fertility treatment, gender realignment, even maybe sporting injuries, be dealt with by the NHS? Perfect world, of course they should, but when resources will always be insufficient to do everything?

I don't think it's lack of money that's killing the NHS.

The NHS can no longer cope with giving free care to people, as the care we expect and can be provided has changed so much: Elderly care, as we no longer look after our elderly parents and people live an extra decade, but that final decade is spent in poor health. Lots of lifestyle illnesses due to smoking, alcohol and sedentary lifestyles Research and technology has resulted in treatment for diseases that would have killed us back in the day, like type 1 diabetes, kidney disease and cancer.

I believe the main way we can ease the burden is by healthy people looking after our bodies as best we can and not getting complacent about the fact that abusing the gift of health will automatically get us new knees, livers, cancer treatments, metformin, BP tablets, mobility scooters, gastric bypasses. We take the NHS for granted. Everyone should receive a virtual bill when they leave, that lets them know how much their treatment would have cost if they had paid.

That way the NHS could spend its time and energy on the deserving people who have become unwell or were born unwell through no fault of their own.

No because nearly half of the adults in this country don’t pay income tax and are economically inactive.

The elephant in the room is - those who’ve “paid in all their lives” didn’t pay in enough to sustain the state as is. Now the younger generations are paying more to subsidise and it will get worse. It’s all unsustainable.

The NHS budget is 133 BILLION per year. An extra 2 billion will hardly touch the sides - it's only 1.5%!

Blair/Brown increased NIC twice "to save the nhs", but it clearly didn't work! Hence the recent further increase in NIC!

You'd need everyone to pay £5 per month extra, each year, i.e. £10 extra in year 2, and so on, ON TOP of normal increases in tax/nic on wage rises, etc.

Where does it stop? How many years do you want to pay an extra £5 per week on top of all the other extra £5 per week you've paid in previous years? After 10 years, that's £50 per week, after 20 years, it's £100 per week.

That's probably what's needed without radical reform, but is Joe Taxpayer happy to keep paying more and more and more for it?

We actually aren’t. Not when you consider higher bands, NI, VAT, council tax etc. It’s all designed to keep the headline rate low. We are a low pay, high tax country for very little return.

How about incentivising people not to use the NHS - allow private health insurance to be tax-deductible. Annual cost in lost tax revenue for a family of 4 would be around £1000. While it's skewed, public spending on health services for a family of 4 is around £8000.

Another unpopular view but we need to get away from the idea that people have the right to be fat/eat badly/do no exercise/smoke etc etc and expect the NHS to fix all the problems it causes.

There needs to be some sort of nudge campaign away from the idea that it's normal for a huge % of the population to be overweight/obese. People voted for Brexit for an extra £350m pe for the NHS (haha) but what would a population who took some responsibility for their own health save it?