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.

I'm generally quite a happy taxpayer, recognise that services need to be paid for and am fine with doing my bit, even recognise that being a higher rate taxpayer makes me priveledged.

However, the idea of throwing more money at the NHS without significant reform does not appeal to me at all.

Oh, I already do that. And am regularly having to use it when the NHS - which I pay substantially into every month - isn't there for me when I need it.

So what I'm saying is, I would pay more into an NHS pot that would guarantee ME NHS treatment.

We have too many freeloaders in this country. Something has to give.

So the only difference is where the money goes. Frankly that’s one of the most ridiculous and illogical arguments I’ve ever heard.

Noooo... What's ridiculous is paying into two healthcare services and barely being able to use the primary one: the NHS!!

At this point I would rather pay double into my private health care, since I'm not seeing any personal benefits of paying into the NHS.

You can use the NHS just not on your terms.

You'll never know when you might need the NHS.

I recently had suspected Sepsis (it wasn't) but within an hour of going to AE, was on a ward, IV antibiotics, PHI don't do A&E.

This. Times a billion

"I wouldn't [pay more to the NHS], there needs to be reform first."

.... and so the circular argument continues. "Reform" requires investment - the NHS has been starved of the funds needed for better equipment, more modern buildings and facilities, more staff etc. - and just playing catch-up requires more investment. Germany invests as much in healthcare (per capita) in 3 years as the UK invests in 4 years - i.e. compared with Germany the NHS is missing around 4 years worth of investment from the last 14 years of Conservative austerity. The result is glaringly obvious - long waits to see a GP, hours spent in pain waiting for an ambulance, people waiting months and years on hospital waiting lists ... just dealing with this backlog will take years, never mind the investment then required to bring services up to 21st century standards. How has a country that is the 6th wealthiest on the planet managed (or mis-managed) to get into this situation?

As for inefficiencies - many of these are caused by the lack of investment. Patients cannot be admitted because of a lack of beds, and senior staff are spending hours in a game of "Bed Jenga" moving beds and patients around instead of actually treating patients and training or mentoring staff. Operations are cancelled at the last minute, or delayed, because of a lack of working, modern equipment, or because of staff shortages in particular skills. The last treatment I had in the UK had a 12-month waiting list and there was only one special machine available locally for this particular treatment. One machine shared (and moved) between 4 hospitals - so the machine spent the equivalent of one to two days a week (20% - 40% of its potential useful time) being dismantled, relocated and then reassembled as it made its way around the hospitals. All this moving around also increased the risk of damage or malfunction. Investing in just one more machine (at a cost of a few thousands, not millions) would have more than doubled the operating capacity - and the more modern machine would itself be more effective and efficient than the existing 20-year old machine.

'Just not on my terms'. Are you joking?
Oh, I do apologise... I didn't realise there would be a more convenient time to almost die. Thanks for the tip! 👍 🙄

I have 'needed' it. Nearly died under their 'care'. PHI saved my life. So, you were saying...

There absolutely needs to be reform first and it needs to be a lot clearer what is funded. We paid for DCs autism assessment privately as the waiting list was so long.

.... and how will you fund this "reform" - or do you think that the UK should be able to have a modern, 21st century health service comparable with other prosperous countries while investing significantly less per head on healthcare and having created backlogs and inefficiencies through a decade and a half of austerity and under-investment?

"Reform first" cannot happen without investment - and at the same time the health service needs to keep the day-to-day service running and work to reduce the backlog.

I think peopleean they need to know what reform looks like before they're happy to fund it.

That's exactly it. Labour have had plenty of time to communicate what exactly they are going to do - they've had 14 years in opposition to come up with a plan and to communicate it.

In my experience the wait was so long that it was effectively inaccessible. We are all paying for the same service and getting different access. Every doctor I know says the system is broken - they are overworked, too many wasted appointments.

"Labour have had plenty of time to communicate what exactly they are going to do - they've had 14 years in opposition to come up with a plan and to communicate it."

Labour have been in government for less than 4 months so until they got to examine the real state of things - not just the NHS - it is limited how much detail they would be able to plan for. Labour's first challenge was to actually get elected, but they held their cards close to their chest so as not to be attacked by the Conservatives and Reform during the campaign - to the point that Conservatives were one day claiming that Labour had no plan, only to start making things up and criticising plans that didn't exist in an attempt to discredit Labour the following day.

"We are all paying for the same service and getting different access. Every doctor I know says the system is broken - they are overworked, too many wasted appointments." - None of which is down to Labour.

The Chancellor has now set out how she sees the path to improving the NHS, but it will be a long and sometimes diffcult road to get there, and she will be under attack from the right-wing media every day for the next 4 years.

Or would you rather have the other lot back? The one's who spent 14 years taking a reasonably well-functioning and well-financed health service and cutting it to the bone - all in the name of tax cuts. The one's who lied about 40 new hospitals, £350m a week for the NHS, Nightingale hospitals and who spaffed billions during Covid on Test and Trace (which cost over 100 times more than Germany's and was less effective) and on un-usable PPE bought from chums and donors.

Good for you but the point is PHI don't do AE and even Bojo had to be treated under the NHS, as very few have ICU's.

i don't know what your local PH does but ours only do standard stuff, hips knees, one doesn't even do hernia's! & complications are sent across to the NHS, FOC.

14 years? a plan made in 2012 would be totally unsuitable for 2017 and one made in 2019 no good for 2024... things evolve.... and according to the OBR, Hunt hid the state of the nations finances from them.

Leaving Lab to fund the PO and Blood scandals, he didn't even fund the nurses and teachers pay rises.

Hunt is also the man who in 2016 told the junior doctors to accept his new contract or bugger off - so they left in their droves and can now be found in hospitals in Australia, Canada and the USA. These are the doctors who should have been working in the NHS for the last 8 years who would now be senior, experienced practitioners.

He was also a member of the government that enacted Brexit, resulting in thousands of European practitioners leaving the country.

People should keep this in mind when complaining that "the wait was so long that it was effectively inaccessible."

No. The NHS is beyond the stage where throwing more cash at it is the answer. It needs serious reform.

Exactly this!!!

take something relatively simple like preventing falls. Falls in older people cost the NHS about £2 billion a year in eg hip replacements, ambulance call outs . We know that proper falls prevention programmes like targeted exercise programmes, regular medication reviews, equipment in people’s home can significantly reduce falls. However these cost money too

so the local ICS has a budget. It needs to keep replacing people’s hips when they fall or responding to 999 calls from people who have fallen. in an ideal world the ICS would find both the hip replacements and the falls prevention programmes so that over time, the preventative programme would reduce the need for his replacement and ambulance call out.

but the ICS budget is finite. As it stands it cannot find both so it focuses on acute urgent response rather than prevention

reforming the system to focus more on prevention is desperately needed but the only way to do it is to have a period of time when you double fund acute response and prevention

and that’s a relatively simple example

now multiply that across multiple diseases, A&E, primary care etc etc

That’s why it’s hard. You can’t pause medical provision while we work out how to do things better

Yet again - how will you keep the service running, work at reducing the backlogs and waiting lists, and still expect to instigate and finance "serious reform" - all for the same money (and far less money per capita than other countries spend on their healthcare services) and with the same resources as now?

Just throwing cash at it alone is clearly not the answer, but without significant additional investment, nothing will be reformed. There are many alternative systems in the world but all require more investment than the UK has been willing to make for the last decade or more. Hunt told Trusts that balancing the books was more important than treating patients and made the political decision not to fund the NHS to anything like the level required, claiming that the country could not afford it. The man clearly had no understanding of the concept of universal healthcare - neither at a holistic high level or at the detailed level of how healthcare works on a day-to-day basis - and should never have been allowed anywhere near the Health Ministry (or Number 11). He clearly wanted to sleepwalk the UK into the American insurance-for-profit model, influenced no doubt by the American companies loud and persistent lobbying and his own misplaced belief in the Free Market.

Individuals cannot afford to be off work waiting for treatment, companies cannot afford to have valuable staff off sick or incapacitated or working at half-speed, and the country as a whole cannot afford to have such high levels of sickness. Long-term sickness is costing the UK economy £43 billion a year, so it is not a question of the country not being able to afford to invest more in healthcare (including in reforming elements that cam be improved) - the UK cannot afford NOT to invest in better healthcare.

@Havanananana, I agree and I wonder if the figure of £43 billion includes the impact on patients’ relatives.

For example, at any given moment, there must be thousands of people who are anxious and preoccupied as they wait (often far too long) to find out their relative’s diagnosis or prognosis. Some may even be off work sick with stress. Then there’s the people who’ve had to give up work (or reduce their hours) in order to care for their sick relatives. Care, which in some cases, wouldn’t have been needed if their relative had been diagnosed and/or treated sooner.