Farage is taking advantage of the fact that people have not understood how the French/German/Austrian "Krankenkasse" model works.
From The Telegraph:
In a call to “change the model” of healthcare in the country, Mr Farage said: “There are countries right next door to us, there’s one country, France, it’s a very different way to funding the NHS.”
The bold type is mine. He's talking about how the NHS is funded, not how healthcare is delivered.
He said that in France “those who can afford it through their taxes pay into an insurance scheme”, while “those that can’t afford it, don’t pay in, so it’s for the mutual benefit of everybody.”
In France all residents must have some form of health insurance, whether state or private. The state system covers everyone regardless of income level or employment status. If your household income is below a certain threshold, you may be eligible for free health insurance coverage.
Healthcare in France is partly funded through social security contributions. Employees paid 7 per cent of their salary toward health coverage in 2023, while employers paid 13 per cent.
That was the original intention of National Insurance in the UK. That was how the "Social Contract" was framed - pay your tax and National Insurance contributions, and you won't need to worry about your healthcare and pension. The major difference in the UK is that the healthcare (and pension) contributions are not ringfenced and politicians got involved, and contribution rates have not kept pace with inflation. Idiots like Hunt actually want to decrease the rate of employer NI - either he doesn't understand how the Social Contract was supposed to work, or he's deliberately wrecking it in order to push people into the arms of the private medical providers.
Social Security contributions - "Compulsory health insurance" in these European countries - do not go to private insurance companies, do not exclude existing conditions and are administered completely separately from government interference. The "Krankenkasser" (Mutual Health Funds) operate largely without political meddling but are public bodies operated at arms length and do not make a profit. People who do not work (students, carers, people on maternity leave, people who are ill etc) have their contributions covered by the State.
For context - I live in an EU country. My wage slip shows my gross wage, the income tax deduction, the "Healthcare Insurance" deduction that I have paid, and the contribution paid by my employer (so exactly like UK NI) and also my Pension contributions and those made by the employer. In financial terms, these rates are a little higher than in the UK, but not significantly.
The second issue concerning Universal Healthcare is how this is then delivered. In the UK, it is delivered mainly by the NHS, with an increasing number of private healthcare companies also providing services to NHS patients. In Europe delivery comes from a variety of providers. Some are private. Some are State-owned. Some are charities (hospitals in many States were originally founded by charities or religious orders). Some are linked to universities and healthcare training establishments. The key feature is that the patient can choose where to be treated and the providers are all paid the same - there are set tariffs for operations, consultations etc. that limit what the providers can charge, and the Health Funds will only pay according to the tariff. If patients want to pay more for a specific surgeon, or for a single room, or for additional services etc. this has to come from their own pockets, or from a separate, commercial insurance policy.
This approach has no similarities with the US model, where healthcare is totally privatised and run for profit and the public healthcare system provides only the very basic level of healthcare. This model must never become the default model in the UK - but unless people wake up to what Hunt and the Conservatives have been doing for the last 14 years or more (from the beginning they never supported the idea of the NHS or Universal Healthcare) then the UK is in danger of sleepwalking into the Free Market, profit-driven US model.