People would be happy to pay more tax if it went directly to the NHS

[Blackcats7]

I think people would be happy to pay more tax if it was guaranteed to go to the NHS.

Irrelevant- it doesn't work like that

"I’d me more then Happy for everyone and I mean everyone to pay a nominal amount. £5 to see a gp and such. £50 to skip to a consultant without referral and such. "

The fact that we have more people who think like this is why we have growing health inequality in the UK.

Posters like this are completely comfortable with the poor (a disproportionate number of whom are female and from ethnic minorities) dying younger and living more years of their life in poor health. Because that's the inevitable outcome of a system that rations healthcare by cost to individuals.

Presumably this poster is not herself poor.

I get universal credit I’m sure I count as poor 😂 despite both me and dh working and technically being directors of a company we just don’t take a salary.

Both private healthcare and private education create and exacerbate social and health inequality and undermine any claim we might make to being a meritocracy.

"I get universal credit I’m sure I count as poor 😂 despite both me and dh working and technically being directors of a company we just don’t take a salary."

And are you comfortable with policies which exacerbate health inequalities?

Why don’t you take a salary?

Because it’s under 3 years old and we wish to reinvest all profits it makes to make it a better bigger company. Plus we both work. It’s a side hobby of sorts which we hope we can grow big enough to then quit work but that takes investment. We are lucky it fits in along side employed work.

I think all the stories on here should start paying for private health insurance and leave the NHS and its socialist principles to those who value it. It would then be less strained.

Tories

The principle of that is sound. People have concept that NHS is 'free' so a proportion abuse it.

On average we have about 10% DNA rate in our service. This is those who don't turn up, dont cancel. They get an apppintment letter, a reminder text, often a reminder call. We get calls 'sorry, I left my child's splints on the plane/bus/train/out in the rain' give me some more - at £1000 a set. Find specialist equipment out in the garden rusty and broken, and costs £3000 for us to replace.

People don't leave their £1000 TV out in the rain, or lose their car, or not turn up for their holiday flight, as they paid for it. But they lose NHS property, and don't turn up for appointments, don't follow advice because they see it as free.
IT'S. NOT.FREE.
Of all the things which demoralise me as a health professional, its not the pay (a nurse/physio can be on £50,000 after as little as 10 years), or the hours (quite reasonable compared to many jobs) the annual/maternity leave (again, pretty good). It's the absolute lack of respect we get from some patients, who expect to be able to shout out and abuse us, to ignore our advice, to not show up.

I have resisted going into private practice for many years as I strongly believe in the principle of the NHS, despite being offered double my NHS salary many times. But being ignored and abused daily grinds you down, and for the first time I am strongly considering leaving the NHS, not for the money, but to work with patients who respect my skills and knowledge, and me, as much as I respect them.

So yes, I think if people had to pay just 1% of their health care costs out of their own pocket, it would change the level of engagement, respect etc. And not to even have to pay if show up,respectful etc. But to have to pay if fail to attend, if don't look after NHS equipment

Agree with this. Processes are awful.

I recently had an appointment with a consultant. First thing she asks was – and is your partner here? (Fertility related) No, nowhere had it been mentioned on the appointment letter or anywhere else that it was necessary.

Long story short, the appointment couldn’t go ahead and needed to be rescheduled. But this had been a fully automated, standardised letter. Every single other appointment would also need the partner to be there. So presumably every single appointment gets scheduled twice, for no reason whatsoever.

More money doesn't solve mismanagement, and it's not just the NHS that plays a role in our countries health systems. For example beds filled with elderly patients because there social supposed they need at home isn't available.

Total reform is needed end to end. 30yrs ago it worked really well, so what's changed? Because it's not funding.

The overall funding in the uk towards health and social care is at the low end for countries like us

And the general state of health is a bit worse ( more obesity and it's related problems)

Ao no amount of fiddling with management is going to fix that

But paying more NI contributions won't make it better. It will be pouring money into the same system.

I don't mind paying my share. However I also want the option to be able to buy specific services. For example I spotted a different looking black freckle on my back. Rather than bother the GP, and thinking I was worried well, I had a skin check at a private clinic. (Mole Clinic - £150, book an appointment on line.) It was a malignant melanoma. I was referred to their private consultant within four days. The consultant kept telling me how lucky I was that it had not spread. Left any longer and I would have died within 2 years.

I am now considered seriously high risk. I have not been able to get a referral for regular skin checks on the NHS so I get them done privately. Its money well spent, indeed I have already had a couple of less serious cancers identified and burnt off. I spend more on a hairdresser each year, so why would I not pay for this. The idea I should be so politically committed that I would risk my life is bonkers. My friend who had breast cancer similarly paid for private mammograms when the NHS did not contact her during covid.

My experience with other issues is that the NHS is great when it works, but often it is not functioning. I currently need to see/speak to the GP but keep putting it off as it involves working out the right system (there seems to be three overlapping systems, one for the GP, one for booking things like blood tests at the hospital and the Epic...which is Epic) and then remembering my password. Ditto I need to order repeat prescriptions, but again I am not sure how to do this. If I go in, the GP's receptionist will simply tell me to do it online. Hopefully at some point I will have saved up enough money to see a private GP who does not have a load of technology ringfencing in place. I am very aware that if I am struggling, about 80% of their inner-city patients will be completely unable to access anything.

The NHS doesn’t need more money it needs reform. It is run in a totally inefficient, inept way with huge mismanagement and waste of resources and funding.

Correct. But the various recent holders of the post of Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (the longest-serving of which is Jeremy Hunt) seem to have all missed the second half of the job title, in terms of the attention that they have (failed) to pay to social care, the lack of funding, and the sheer lack of planning for an aging population. It is not as though they had nothing to go on - the government has known since before 1954 how many people over the age of 70 there would likely be in 2024, what sort of ailments they would be suffering from and what level of care they would need.

Funding for health and social care has changed. Too little has been invested in building and maintaining hospitals and other facilities. Too little has been invested in the recruitment, training and retention of staff. Too little has been invested in health information and in preventative healthcare - initiatives that could prevent people getting as ill as they are, or that identify problems before they become serious and require more intensive and more costly intervention.

The UK spends far less per capita on healthcare than comparable countries. Nowhere else has over 10% of the population waiting months or years for a hospital appointment. Nowhere else in the Western world tolerates waits of 10 hours or more for an ambulance. Good though it is once you access the NHS, the waiting times and service levels are poor in what is supposed to be a modern, affluent country - the 5th/6th/7th richest on the planet.

And nowhere else is there a model that is exclusively free at the point of delivery. Every other country has built in some competition between healthcare providers, which drives response, whether between hospitals or lab services or doctors.

Israel (which was mentioned upthread) has four competing national Health Maintenance Organisations, all of which deliver the basic essentials but there's freedom to offer different services too, to find out which are preferred, and freedom for patients/consumers to swap providers, so the organisations don't turn into the unresponsive blob. Most of western Europe requires some element of co-payment for all but the very poorest or children, as does Australia.

Only if it was reformed and shed some of the multiple layers of management, improved procurement and organising processes. Money won't solve any of that.

The NHS is a money pit for which no amount of money would be enough. It needs to waste less before more taxes are funnelled into this failing organization.

However, to fund a team to deliver this brief would be political suicide and there's not a single party who have the balls to do what needs to be done here and conduct a massive review with a view to implement. They'll watch the whole institution crumble and point fingers at the others the whole time before they allow themselves to be accused of destroying our crown jewel.

This is why in my ideal world the government would insist that an NHS steering committee was set up comprising of members from all main parties. The credit/blame should be shared and it shouldn't be allowed to be the political football that it is, as we all suffer for it

And yet the evidence from healthcare research suggests that the NHS has far fewer managers per head of workforce than is normal in a business.

https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/fact-or-fiction-the-nhs-has-too-many-managers

There's other evidence that supports this.

I think you've just fallen prey to the Daily Mail/Telegraph anti-NHS propaganda.

"The NHS is a money pit for which no amount of money would be enough. It needs to waste less before more taxes are funnelled into this failing organization."

In 2010 70% of people asked were satisfied with their NHS healthcare, putting the NHS on par with many European systems of healthcare and just behind Australia's.

Most healthcare systems have increased their real terms spend on healthcare by 4% per annum, in order to meet the needs of a ageing populations and keep up with growing healthcare costs. But since 2011 NHS funding has only increased by 2% a year, which is why things are the way they are now. That and the public health impact of austerity which has increased the burden of illness on the NHS.

Private involvement and competitive tendering has increased hugely in the NHS over the past 14 years.

Have you not noticed?

Primary care - GP services are contracted services. Other services are provided by SERCO, Oxeleas, BUPA, Virgin Care, Capita etc. A vast amount of NHS mental healthcare is provided by the private sector.

We can choose our GP from local providers. We can choose where we give birth. We can often choose other services through choose and book.

And the more private involvement there is in the NHS, the worse the overall service gets.

You keep pushing this ideologically driven view that all the problems of the NHS can be put at the door of its funding model, while ignoring that changes to this model to increase patient choice and private sector involvement, haven't improved people's experiences of healthcare. In fact this study suggests that outsourcing NHS care to the private sector may even contribute to an increase in avoidable mortality and morbidity.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(22)00133-5/fulltext