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 love it! 😆

@LexMitior Imho the nhs should not be set up to deal with things the govt of the day should be fixing.

Diet and food pricing is down to them, no or little exercise in schools, crappy school meals, low incomes, social deprivation, processed foods... how many fucking Macd's have we got? and host of similar.
They ve allowed a free for all of poor quality food.

On adult exercise, they don't encourage that either.

My point to Cinnamon was that people made poor choices pre NHS, its not a guarantee.

Blair's trebling of the NHS didn't cure it of it's problems. Both my mother and FIL suffered awful treatment (or lack of treatment) in 2008 and 2010 respectively. Both would have lived longer had they received any modicum of decent care. Both died of cancer that could have been treated had it been treated earlier. The way the NHS ignored them repeatedly, with both languishing on wards for weeks/months waiting for life saving operations (that kept getting cancelled at last minute) and being randomly moved between hospitals for no obvious reason (presumably to reset the waiting time clock!) was absolutely criminal.

That was after FIL had suffered similar delays/incompetence a couple of years earlier with a different issue that likewise wasn't diagnosed properly for months during which time he went downhill under "supervised neglect" as a succession of doctors couldn't find the reason so ignored him hoping a different doctor the next day would have a better idea!

@helford - the public health environment in the UK is very poor. It does encourage obesity.

There was once a Burger King in Charing Cross hospital. I hope they've got rid of it now.

I don't know why people are so credulous about government looking after them however. The Tory party hate the NHS, it's value, how it is funded, and they nibble at it all the time because they are well aware they cannot privatize it at strike. But then most British voters refuse to pay tax or support policies for social investment.

They go for a blond twit and a figure on the side of a bus and no delivery. I know my family understood the value of the NHS when it came. People are now learning what it looks like without it.

@user1497207191

It is not possible to blanket sweeping statements about the NHS based on your terrible experience.

I had excellent treatment in 2007 but that does not mean the NHS was excellent back then either!

Because the fact remains, we did not have the levels of disruption and awful waits 15/20 years ago, that we have had in the NHS for many years now - 3.2m waiting list in 2020 pre Covid.

Personally, i'd like to see us come up with a 25year plan, set in law, agreed by all main parties but as Lex as said, the Tories don't want a national health service, they see it as a socialist construct and much like the Republicans in the US they hate the very idea & fund it just to keep it ticking over but now even that has failed.

Paying more tax while this greedy incompetent government are in power is throwing money into their pockets

Blair's trebling of the NHS didn't cure it of it's problems

this was intended to demonstrate that throwing money at the NHS wouldn’t help, and started on the road to privatisation by the back door- PFI, “social enterprise” aka privatisation of staff groups etc…

No, because it would all be wasted on bureaucracy, box-ticking non-jobs and extortionate agency fees. The NHS is NOT underfunded. It is dysfunctional, wasteful, badly run and unfit for purpose.

As others have said, £1/person wouldn’t touch the sides. But the thing that’s cracking the NHS isn’t obesity, or too many managers, or paying £50 for a lightbulb. those things don’t help, but they aren’t that significant. The NHS’s biggest challenge is dealing with an aging population. The biggest expenditure is on over 65s. Not because they’re obese or have unrealistic expectations, or are sitting under £50 lightbulbs but because we’ve put our money into learning how to stop people dying, and it’s worked.

And we’re at the tip of the iceberg. Aging is going to continue being an issue and unless we start putting our money into keeping people more able bodied and able minded rather than just alive, we’re going to find the NHS less and less able to cope.

The NHS spent £400m on diversity managers and £100k on teaching midwives about the terminology to use for trans men in their care. I don’t know how much the taxpayer funded rainbow badges cost.

I don’t trust them to spend any additional funds wisely. There needs to be a complete ban on this sort of garbage first and then much more efficient procurement

Not sure where you got the £2.5 billion from. The 2022-23 NHS Budget was £152.6 billion

https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/nhs-budget

Given there are 32.2 million income taxpayers (2021-22 stats) last year, a 1% increase in the NHS Budget, evenly spread, would cost each such taxpayer £4,739 per annum.

So that works out as £1 every 2 hours or so.

If you want to simply give the NHS equivalent to inflation of 10.1%, that would
mean £1 every 12 minutes and that's BEFORE any real terms increases.

I don't think the OP seems to have even the vaguest clue about how much public services cost!

Its £40m not £400m.

and thats according to the Daily Mail, so probably £4m.

Diversity managers are quite the thing in private industry.

Do you not believe in retention and equality?

Agency fees are charged because the NHS can't recruit staff on existing salaries. To avoid paying agency, you have to significantly increase pay so that agency staff aren't needed!

@IntentionalError The average funding for the NHS has been approx 2% less p.a. for decades and thats why it has old buildings & less staff and equipment.

What Govt s do is throw money at it on short term firefighting schemes, no long term planning, hence billions spent on agency staff because no one planned for the extra staff needed as we age and now billions more spent to get private hospitals to do nhs operations.

£1 per taxpayer per year would equivalent of 0.02% increase.

It would be the equivalent of giving someone on a £20,000 income an extra £4 per year, and expecting that to make a difference.

@helford private companies are spending their shareholders’ money so I don’t care what they do.

the NHS is probably the most diverse workforce in the Uk, I don’t think it’s an issue that take priority over clinical work if there is (as claimed) a shortage of money and people.

They'd piss it up the wall or give themselves yet another pay rise.

It really really isn't as shit. It has a lot of issues yes, but having lived near London it is so so much better up here than it was down there

The NI rise was reversed but the Government are continuing to invest that amount in social care, but doing so in a way that allows increased investment in social care provision, rather than using it to reduce contributions to care costs as was then original intention. This should allow NHS beds to be freed up more quickly, taking the pressure off NHS services somewhat. It's a more efficient investment that directly increasing NHS budgets.

Councils have had a very significant and very welcome increase in funding for social care as part of the Autumn Statement as a result... something that has had surprisingly little new airtime (though maybe not so surprising given that social care isn't sexy)

That's a pretty daft bit of very lazy analysis...

You don't give them a sufficient pay rise, you continue to lose staff, increasing the already eye watering vacancy rates... causing care to reduce further and requiring exorbitant agency workers to cover essential gaps.

Apart from not prescribing paracetamol, which would save peanuts, none of those things actually save money...

Well, encouraging nurses to stay would, but how the heck are you meant to
do that when you're reducing NHS funding
as you suggest. "Please stay nurse - we really love you. We just can't give you an pay rise, let alone one that matches inflation, because we're cuts costs you see. Yes, there are loads of less stressful jobs out there that pay better, but have a sticker and round of applause and I'm sure you'll now want to stay!"

Of course they would. Swapping even 1% of GP appointments for a visit to a pharmacy would save loads. Reducing staff turnover and the use of agency staff would be a massive saving and prescribing paracetamol costs the NHS £80m pa which may be a drop in the ocean but it's quite a few nurses!

Of course they would. Swapping even 1% of GP appointments for a visit to a pharmacy would save loads.

How does that actually save cash?

Because you need 1% fewer GP appointments at a cost of c. £40 per appointment.