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 wouldn't pay more into the NHS until they overhaul the whole system.
So much money is wasted on pointless bureaucracy, useless IT and crap managers.

NHS received 181 billion last year 😮 no more money until they have a shake up. My sister worked for NHS and freely admitted to skiving off and said everyone did it!

Rubbish! The top rate of income tax in the 1950s and 60s was 90%! This was then cut to 75% in 1971 but was kept at 90% for investments.

One reason the NHS is getting worse is because of crumbling buildings, old medical equipment, poor IT systems, staff sickness & lack of adult social care in the community.

Medical Inflation is also far higher than consumer inflation, yet funding doesn't account for this, real terms NHS spend is set to fall.

@ConJob ,

Yes, but there were many ways around it, such as company cars, and even school fees, being tax deductible.

And the cash economy was huge. I remember my parents had £20k in a hidden draw in the 1970s!

People don’t pay such high taxes.

@Alexandra2001 you are right of course and all of that needs addressed. I do wonder if there’s a societal aspect to it too though?

Such a privalged point of view op in a col crisis when so many are struggling to make ends meet.

Our budget on the Isle of Man was released a couple of weeks ago. This is what the government have decided to do. Increase of 2% on income tax rate to go to the Health Service.

People on a whole are not happy. Yes our health service has become absolutely shocking in the last 10 years and everyone what's an improvement but what we are not happy with is us tax payers having to pay more tax during a cost of living nightmare when the government have wasted 100s of millions on complete crap.

They go over budget on practically every project (one project of the top of my head started at something like 11m and is now close to 70m)! Zero accountability.

It isn’t make the NHS more efficient and then allocate more cash. They both need to happen simultaneously.

If we don’t provide more cash, the system will definitively fail, although arguably it has already (hours to wait for category one ambulance, someone dying unnoticed in an A&E waiting room).

And Labour not even discussing what they want to do to fix it.

People who fear the American system, don’t, as we already have it. Your average NHS hospital (with some honourable exceptions) has become a Blue Cross hospital and those who can afford it pay to be treated better.

The only difference is A&E and ambulances. I believe a private A&E is opening in London and I am sure someone will open an emergency private ambulance service soon….

There was a stat on the radio the other day that said NHS spending was the highest it had ever been in real terms (and as a proportion of GDP I think) and staff numbers were higher than ever.

That indicates a productivity issue rather than a financial issue. So yes, while I think the NHS may need better funding, I’m not particularly keen for it to become a black hole that just swallows cash, which I think is the current risk.

What country is this please?

@Newbutoldfather Do you live under a stone?

Labours Wes Streeting has, at every opportunity, been banging the reform drum, he has been to many EU countries and looked at Japanese, Aus and NZ healthcare systems to learn what we can do better with the NHS.

@Lampslights on people struggling with CoL, well, if a poorer worker cannot get timely treatment, they will be off work and will then face even greater hardship, good healthcare should be a priority.

Just give it directly to Baroness Michelle Mone and all the other Tory cronies.

No the whole thing needs to be reformed. It doesn't need more money it needs to be run better.

I accidentally voted YANBU.

YABVVU. It’ll just be spent on more ‘HR equality/gender (aka trans) advisors and more pointless surgeries that should never be done on the NHS.

Spending is the highest ever. Number of staff are the highest ever. It’s all being sucked somewhere - and not to the benefit of the taxpayer. More money = more wastage.

@DaisyHaites ,

No, that is totally wrong.

Medical technology and our expectations of medicine have changed beyond belief in the last 30 years.

MRIs, PETs didn’t even exist until recently, and the idea of the state helping infertile people to have babies would have been considered ridiculous. We also treat older people and the demographic as a whole means people are older and need more treatment.

If we want modern medicine, we have to pay for it. The NHS has massive inefficiencies but also massive economies of scale. I don’t believe, on an international measure, we compare that badly in terms of overall efficiency.

But what does Wes Streeting plan to do? What has he learnt from all these trips?

@Alexandra2001 ,

‘Labours Wes Streeting has, at every opportunity, been banging the reform drum, he has been to many EU countries and looked at Japanese, Aus and NZ healthcare systems to learn what we can do better with the NHS.’

https://labour.org.uk/missions/nhs/

So this is Labour’s urgent plan, all sound and fury, signifying nothing! Long on witter, very short on detail-in an election year.

Alexandra2001 We can reassess how feasible it is at massive expense to prolong life at all costs.

I would however having worked within the NHS it needs reforming first as it will just get swallowed up in the bottomless pit otherwise.

Nope not happy to pay any more tax at all. There needs to be widespread reform in this country.

People who keep saying ‘it needs reforming first’, what do you want to happen if you or your child needs A&E next year?

Reform isn’t an immediate thing, especially in an organisation of that size..l

We don't, older people aren't treated to the n th degree.

My DD worked in various depts in the NHS and emphasis is on independent living & antibiotics for many infections no longer work.

She never saw "prolong life at any cost" or do you mean an otherwise independent 80yo shouldn't have a replacement knee even if in great pain?

If you want Euthanasia, then so say.

When my mum had her stroke, the care was palliative only, they could have easily prolonged her life with drips and possibly antibiotics but the med decision was not too.

@MariaVT65
See the problem is that people talk about 'waste' using individual examples. The automatic letter when you've already booked may be wasted on you. But sending an automated letter to everyone is cheaper than employing someone to sift through all records of under 3's to see if an appointment has been booked and far cheaper than having higher numbers of unvaccinated kids (which this is designed to reduce). The long term health consequences of living with the results of measles mumps etc are costly (not to mention awful). The instructions to get rid of tablets will likely have been from a patient safety review. The overall cost of people not disposing of medication will be one or two not patients not doing that and accidentally taking them/stockpiling and taking leading to adverse consequences and litigation (because it's the NHS clininicans 'fault' for not saying 'dispose of them'). The litigation is expensive for the NHS so you get defensive practices that look 'wasteful'.
Healthcare is a highly regulated safety focused 'industry' with huge and very complicated interdependencies. The but you see as a patient is tiny decisions across a while healthcare system are always based on cost but they don't necessarily look like it to individual patients who dint see the whole picture. Even staff on the ground don't always see the whole picture.....
So we get this narrative of 'waste' and poor efficiency. Actually the areas that that occur are due to lack of or not enough investment up front that could save money down the line. There is no possibility to invest to save under this government... Now that is wasteful

Does the private healthcare in the UK have access to better treatment and medicine? Or is it just less wait times?