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.

You're not listening.

The US SYSTEM is as alien to me as an African system might be.
There are very effective and cost efficient and working systems in Europe.

And the reason I am even thinking about France and Germany is that we have had years to do this. Yet all the Tory politicians I have ever met engaged with health are working US healthcare.

That is what is wanted. The Tory Party have had 12 years to do otherwise. If you think they are going to be interested in making costs reasonable then this imo cuts across their own self interest.

which would also need a fully integrated universal computer system for all providers, which would make a private contractor an unfathomable amount of money at the prices they would charge for it
The NHS already has this in place for almost all appointments and certainly all surgeries. Hospitals could already bill individual patients if it were a new policy. I don't think it's right though as the majority.

Gosh it's almost as if the NHS has been set up for private providers to bill you. What a surprise

All I know is that my health is deteriorating rapidly because of a complete lack of information sharing and a lack of centralised control and dissemination of the information between trusts. It's such a simple fucking solution and my patience has run out.

But let me have 3 echocardiograms for good measure.

I think we had people who had been in care homes for 10-15 years. If people think their basic tax pays for that they are surely mistaken. It costs a fortune to fund. People who retire at 60 expecting their full care to have been paid for until 100 it's not true.

This is not about payment or taxes. This is about utter idiocy.

I think my family paid about USD 80-100/month as a standing fee
Yes, when you're young and healthy. Add a chronic or genetic condition and this suddenly triple or more.

Yep, OH has now been waiting over a year for a prescription for Vitamin D supplements!

He was already on the strongest dose available over the counter from the pharmacy. And pharmacists have told him not to take more than the daily dose of that as it "may be" dangerous and cause issues with his other medication.

His oncologist has highlighted low Vit D and told him to contact the GP surgery. His orthopaedic surgeon highlighted low VT D and told him to contact the GP surgery. He's had numerous phone calls with the GP reception asking for Vit D prescription, a few phone consultations with the nurse practioner, and a couple of phone consultations with a GP. Answer is always the same - "just go to the chemist and ask for Vit D" to which OH always replies, "I've been on strongest OTT Vit D for a couple of years and it's not enough", then they say they'll "consult" the "prescribing team" and get back to him, but they never do.

So he's taken numerous phone consultation appointments just to tell them the same thing and get the same answer, but he's still not got his prescription which everyone agrees he needs! And yet the GP surgeries always complain of being too busy! How about they deal with things first time then and not cause patients to have to keep calling back because they've not done the simplest of things!

Yes, his patience has run out too! Even moreso that he has a broken bone in his foot that's not healing, which the orthopaedic surgeon says is probably caused by lack of Vit D!

It doesn’t need more money, it needs total reform along the lines of the best European health systems. But people can’t bear the thought of that and shriek about the USA and ‘our NHS’ so it will carry on being an expensive shambles.

Thrown out walking frames after being used once? Bank staff paid twice or three times the amount of regular nurses? The waste is eye watering
No it isn't. You are talking peanuts. Not even .001% of the while funding.

It's as stupid a statement as someone saying they are crap at money and easing their income because they use two sheets of toilet paper when they could use one. Probably true, but I don't that would explain why a family is £10000s in debts.

The public really need to educate themselves about the scale of money we are talking about, and focusing on very minimal issues solely whilst ignoring the issue that costs half the NHS IS bad management.

Obesity has increased massively ( to coin a phrase). Smoking is less common, but alcohol related injuries and diseases have increased, and drug related illness was tiny . Plus of course that they used to kill you, you weren’t continually patched up and sent out to resume consumption.

As a percentage, yes, a small proportion. But it's still huge in real monetary terms and would pay for extra nurses. And it's not just walking frames is it? It'll be everything that is used/provided in the NHS from cheap sheets of paper through to unused expensive drugs, unused medical consumables, etc.

Even 0.01% of a huge figure is still a huge figure!

I think you're attitude typifies a lot of the NHS wastage - just because you consider it "tiny" in the big scheme of things, you don't care about the waste. Extrapolate that across over a million NHS staff and you've a big waste problem.

If every member of staff wastes just a pound a day, that's a million pounds wasted every day.

No, it seems to me the NHS needs to understand it's own costs. Of course one walking frame isn't going to break the MHS but 1000s of walking frames every year, plus the letters, plus unaudited overtime, plus wasted GP appointments because they didn't do what they said they'd do the first time, plus not dealing with minor things that then become bug things etc etc etc.

Of course getting all these things running properly would make a huge difference. Of course the NHS is always going to need a lot of money, but you can only spend it once, save it on crutches you can fund a nurse

There is a lot of health tourism in A&E and in Maternity.

The Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives and the Faculty of Public Health, amongst others, disagree with you. The idea that so called "health tourism" presents a significant financial burden on the NHS was de-bunked years ago. Many top Doctors and public health experts have called out the discourse around "health tourism" as being a wilful distraction from the fact that successive governments have chosen to spend a much lower proportion of gross domestic product on healthcare than other high-income countries.

They should make rich pensioners pay NI

And we're back to asking, what's the definition of rich?

No, @vivainsomnia Your statement that payments go up would be true of a traditional insurance plan.

In an HMO, all employees of a given employer in a category pay the same rate (there are plans for singles, families, etc). Also, pre-existing conditions must be covered and no one may be denied coverage

Exactly not even just European , Australia and Singapore have very good systems. We will be forced into the US system because everyone keeps burying their heads in the sand. Or they will bring euthunasia in and it won't be out of the the kindness of Tory hearts but to bring the care bill down.

I'm not a politician but many have retired at 60 living until 90s even 100s. They haven't paid enough in for the scale of care needed. Every UTI , medications , every fall, dysphagia , special diets, 24/7 supervision, pressure ulcer all needs funding out of the pot.

Actually, figures from the last two or three years suggest the UK spends about the same, or slightly more, on healthcare as a % of GDP compared to comparable EU countries. Very similar to France, a little less than Germany and Switzerland, but more than Spain, Italy, Belgium. I read it yesterday, but can't remember where. I will look for the source.

They would be better off trying to reduce costs in the NHS rather than increase funding. Things like educating people about when they can go to a pharmacy rather than a doctor, or a minor injuries centre rather than calling an ambulance. Stop offering things like paracetamol for free on prescription when people could just buy it for 30p off the shelf. Encourage nurses to stay in the job so they don't have to employ agency nurses which cost 3x as much.
Obviously none of these things are simple fixes, but there must be so many places where the NHS is just haemorrhaging money. It needs rebuilding from the ground up.

I think my perhaps cynical point is that while there are some good ideas in terms of replicating European models, that has been an option for a long time.

If a politician does not do something for over a decade but which benefits a donating party interest, then a voter should join the dots. The changes that are happening to the NHS support an expensive US model. The management is extremely costly, the same as the US, the waste is similar in as much as private treatment puts everything at beyond economic cost because of the clear profit motive, and further there are independent trusts with a billing system.

The very clear expectation is that if you want timely treatment you will pay for it privately. That is not an accident.

No way would I be willing to pay a single penny more towards the NHS. If everyone gave every single penny they earn to the NHS, it would be no better than it is now. It is a massive monster of a financial black hole. It needs to be disbanded and we need a system that actually works and which reflects the needs of the population as it is now (including huge numbers of old and obese people, and those who smoke, drink too much, eat crap and don't get any exercise).

I don’t want to pay any more for the NHS. There needs to be more tax-deductible incentives to not use it. With the state of the (generally self-inflicted) overall and ageing health of the UK population, there is no amount of money that will cover everything needed. It needs some fresh thinking.