** The NHS Thread **

[Psamathe]

(Started in the spirit of "The Brexit thread", "the "Odds and Sods thread", likely to drift about discussing different aspects)

Interesting reports that to mostly maintain the existing NHS services would mean every household paying an extra £2000 a year in tax

NHS needs £2,000 in tax from every household to stay afloat – report
British households will need to pay an extra £2,000 a year in tax to help the NHS cope with the demands of an ageing population, according to a new report that highlights the unprecedented financial pressures on the health system.

Two thinktanks – the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Health Foundation – have said there can be no alternative to higher taxation if there are to be even modest improvements to care over the next 15 years, adding that demands on the health service will continue to rise.

The reports seems to be "merging" or conflating more than one issue. That the NHS needs more funding (e.g. £2000/household/year) seems one thing and that this must come from extra taxation seems a completely separate issue. they seem to be merging the amount needed with the source and I'd see those as separate issues.

Firstly decide to properly fund the NHS (e.g. the £2000/household/year). Then decide where the money is coming from e.g. prioritising expenditure of existing taxation. If that prioritisation does not release adequate finds then why set the amount per household, why not per company or on capital gains tax rates or VED or any of the other vast range of different income sources government use or combination of sources.

I'm all for funding the NHS properly (and I'd have no idea about specifying how much that requires), but maybe such financial demands means we should e.g. look again at Corporation Tax cuts ...

Ian

[pwa]

I agree that we, as a nation, need to pay whatever it takes to provide the level of health care (and social care) that we deem appropriate. The £2k per family gives an idea of the scale of spending required. We must ask ourselves what matters most to us, having a really good holiday and a nice new car, or having an ambulance turn up in a reasonable space of time when you or your loved ones need it. I'd go for the latter. I'd opt to pay more tax and have less in my pocket for luxuries.

A few months ago one of my elderly relations fell and broke his hip. An ambulance was requested. He lay on the floor in agony for three and a half hours before an ambulance arrived. Non-urgent because it was only a fracture, and he was breathing. He died of complications relating to the fracture a few weeks later. I'd say that the level of service is not good enough. We can and must do better.

[Psamathe]

I agree that we, as a nation, need to pay whatever it takes to provide the level of health care (and social care) that we deem appropriate. The £2k per family gives an idea of the scale of spending required. We must ask ourselves what matters most to us, having a really good holiday and a nice new car, or having an ambulance turn up in a reasonable space of time when you or your loved ones need it. I'd go for the latter. I'd opt to pay more tax and have less in my pocket for luxuries......

I would agree in that I'd be happy to pay more but I do feel that there are other incomes that could at least reduce the amount we would need to pay in new/higher personal taxes e.g. should we be paying more whilst there are Corporation Tax cuts being made and other sources that might make the burden on individuals lower.

I see attaching the "for the NHS" to personal a tax increase is just a way of making that tax increase more acceptable to us. What if the NHS funding came from general taxation and the personal tax increase was to pay for a "Corporation Tax reduction". It's all "money in the pot" from different sources. When we go any buy our food shopping we (or I) don't think that this is being paid for from my pension or from my tax rebate or from my bank interest or anything. It's just different sources topping up my bank balance and I just spend my bank balance.

Ian

[bovlomov]

Every government wants to shake up the way the NHS is organised, but the surest way to save money is to focus on prevention - to tackle inactivity, bad diet and pollution. As long as political parties are in the pockets of the motoring and food industries, fiddling with management structures is the path of least resistance.

[Psamathe]

Better way to explain my initial point is, "Is the 'for the NHS' just being used as a means to make a personal tax increase more acceptable to the electorate"?

Ian

[Psamathe]

Every government wants to shake up the way the NHS is organised, but the surest way to save money is to focus on prevention - to tackle inactivity, bad diet and pollution....

I wonder if there are different ways to focus on prevention. I used to do a regular activity and one of the group was a retired NHS consultant and she was regularly saying how the NHS preventative "directives" were a waste of money and had never been demonstrated to save anything (the "campaigns" and "initiatives" where GP practices are paid extra to e.g take the blood pressures of certain "at risk" groups). I've no idea about how true this is, just repeating what somebody who'd spent their career in the NHS had said.

But I do agree that there are many things outside the NHS that the government could do to improve health. And many are not particularly expensive and just require a little motivation and accepting that not every government scheme has to generate large private profits.

...As long as political parties are in the pockets of the motoring and food industries, fiddling with management structures is the path of least resistance.

It does always annoy me what industry sectors keep arguing how self-regulation is far more effective, completely ignoring that they said the same 10 years ago and that their self-regulation has achieved nothing. Yet they keep pushing it as the answer to everything and our governments keep believing it (ignoring the ever accumulating evidence that it does no more than protect the profits of those self-regulating companies).

Ian

[bovlomov]

It does always annoy me what industry sectors keep arguing how self-regulation is far more effective, completely ignoring that they said the same 10 years ago and that their self-regulation has achieved nothing. Yet they keep pushing it as the answer to everything and our governments keep believing it (ignoring the ever accumulating evidence that it does no more than protect the profits of those self-regulating companies).

There are arguments about the exact figures, but there is little doubt that the effects of bad air consume a large part of NHS funding, as do the effects of bad diet and inactivity - and that's before accounting for the lost productivity, societal breakdown and general misery.

I understand the case against the nanny state, but I think improvements can be made with very little intervention - and by removing government interventions that are currently a cause of ill health (transport policy being an obvious case). Some of the pleas for self-regulation are in fact pleas for the preservation of favouritism.

[Vorpal]

The NHS is good value for money. Countries that have better services (or at least higher customer satisfaction) have considerably higher costs. And many countries have higher costs without providing a better service.

I agree about the effects of pollution and inactivity. The government need to invest in making it easier. But they don't look at it like that for the most part. They look at a motorcentric economic system and think that they are making something worse, rather than better.

[mercalia]

was the £2000 per year? the report i read seemed unclear mentioning a number of years from x to y. ie each person needs to pay £2000 over the next few years not per year. £2000/year is a lot of money

[Psamathe]

was the £2000 per year? the report i read seemed unclear mentioning a number of years from x to y. ie each person needs to pay £2000 over the next few years not per year. £2000/year is a lot of money

Guardian article said

NHS needs £2,000 in tax from every household to stay afloat – report
British households will need to pay an extra £2,000 a year in tax to help the NHS cope

Or from the report itself

This is equivalent to £56 billion in today’s terms, or £2,000 per year for each household in the UK.

So I guess every year.

Ian

[Mick F]

That figure of two grand per household means what?
Family of six all working, or a family of four all out of work, or two retired old codgers?

Therefore, it means an average. Some won't pay tax any at all, and some will. Some will have to pay loads over the two grand.

[Vorpal]

That figure of two grand per household means what?
Family of six all working, or a family of four all out of work, or two retired old codgers?

Therefore, it means an average. Some won't pay tax any at all, and some will. Some will have to pay loads over the two grand.

To say that it means extra tax is conflating two separate problems. The first is the funding of the NHS, and the second is overall budget. They could increase funding to the NHS by decreasing funding elsewhere, or they could increase taxes, or some combination of the two.

IMO, underfunding of the NHS is more down to austerity & repeated cuts than a need to increase taxes.

[Mick F]

They've given extra money to the NHS by reducing funding to defence and police etc, plus roads and infrastructure funding cuts.

[hondated]

Never really used the NHS until recently so I certainly would not mind paying more if it went directly to the NHS but I perhaps may have another opinion if I was younger married with a couple of kids earning a low salary.
What I was amazed to learn when watching Daily Politics today was that some of the buildings used were sold off and we are now having to pay rent for them.
I also know that we have also had to pay compensation to Richard Branson for not being given a contract he tendered for so what's that all about !

[Cunobelin]

Never really used the NHS until recently so I certainly would not mind paying more if it went directly to the NHS but I perhaps may have another opinion if I was younger married with a couple of kids earning a low salary.
What I was amazed to learn when watching Daily Politics today was that some of the buildings used were sold off and we are now having to pay rent for them.
I also know that we have also had to pay compensation to Richard Branson for not being given a contract he tendered for so what's that all about !

You could also analyse where the expenses are?


What you are looking at are the multiple PFIs paying massive interest rate to private companies

In most cases one of the Nurses would have received better rate then the Trusts if they had nipped into the local Bank and taken out a personal loan or overdaft

Thanks Tony / Gordon