Do the Tories want to lose the next election?

angrypirate

PaulF81 wrote: »

three little letters... N H S

Choppidy chop chop.

You have to sort out the biggest areas of spending. Far easier to make 5% cuts (125 Billion NHS) to a huge budget than 70% cuts to a smaller one.

Thats why freezing the state pension for 5 years would make sense. (67 billion 2009-2010) approx 10 billion saved per year iafter 5 years of no indexing. There. Saved another 16 billion.

Problem is, NHS is seen as a Holy Grail, a reglion if you like. People are shocked by the idea that it wastes money, is inefficient and needs sorting out. If the Tory government were to suggest freezing the budget, then Labour would go "Look look look, they are cutting the NHS" and the BBC and a few newspapers would also join in the band wagon saying how terrible it is and how nasty the tories are, instead of looking at the finer detail and what they were trying to achieve. The state of journalism in this country now is shocking.

Its the jounalists now who decide what is news worthy and what isnt. You have to dig around to really discover what the true news is. Just look how the BBC came under fire 4 years ago when Daniel Hannans speech got out on youtube. Im sure nothing would be different if something like that were to happen again.

grizzly1911

angrypirate wrote: »

Problem is, NHS is seen as a Holy Grail, a reglion if you like. People are shocked by the idea that it wastes money, is inefficient and needs sorting out. If the Tory government were to suggest freezing the budget, then Labour would go "Look look look, they are cutting the NHS" and the BBC and a few newspapers would also join in the band wagon saying how terrible it is and how nasty the tories are, instead of looking at the finer detail and what they were trying to achieve. The state of journalism in this country now is shocking.

Its the jounalists now who decide what is news worthy and what isnt. You have to dig around to really discover what the true news is. Just look how the BBC came under fire 4 years ago when Daniel Hannans speech got out on youtube. Im sure nothing would be different if something like that were to happen again.

Paul's issue is more around wasting money keeping older people alive than really restricting the NHS though. It would also have a knock on effect to saving money on pensions and freeing up property from those dieing early.

N1AK

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Paul's issue is more around wasting money keeping older people alive than really restricting the NHS though. It would also have a knock on effect to saving money on pensions and freeing up property from those dieing.

It's a pointless issue to blame politicians for though. Any party that suggests we institute that policy will be finished and no amount of voter education could change that in a short-medium time frame.

angrypirate

grizzly1911 wrote: »

Paul's issue is more around wasting money keeping older people alive than really restricting the NHS though. It would also have a knock on effect to saving money on pensions and freeing up property from those dieing early.

I think thats a bit harsh with older people, who might have taken care of themselves their entire life, contributed to the system their entire working lives and old age is the only time they come to need to NHS.

I would like to see a system where National Insurance is treated like a normal piece of Insurance. Everyone pays their premium no matter who you are. Maybe even have an annual or bi-annual health assessment determining the size of your premium. If you are fat, your premium goes up. A smoker / alcoholic, it goes up. If you are fit, it goes down. Im sure the cost of the health assessment would be recuperated by the number of life threatening diseases that would be caught in their early stages as part of the health assessment. It annoys me when I see the NHS paying for treatment for smokers with lung diseases, or fat people having gastric bypasses.

PaulF81

N1AK wrote: »

It's a pointless issue to blame politicians for though. Any party that suggests we institute that policy will be finished and no amount of voter education could change that in a short-medium time frame.

It will change though, when those who are having major quality of life decreases to pay for other people's care. It will all change the day people realise that going forward, such schemes will be no longer affordable for those paying the bill.

PaulF81

angrypirate wrote: »

I think thats a bit harsh with older people, who might have taken care of themselves their entire life, contributed to the system their entire working lives and old age is the only time they come to need to NHS.

I would like to see a system where National Insurance is treated like a normal piece of Insurance. Everyone pays their premium no matter who you are. Maybe even have an annual or bi-annual health assessment determining the size of your premium. If you are fat, your premium goes up. A smoker / alcoholic, it goes up. If you are fit, it goes down. Im sure the cost of the health assessment would be recuperated by the number of life threatening diseases that would be caught in their early stages as part of the health assessment. It annoys me when I see the NHS paying for treatment for smokers with lung diseases, or fat people having gastric bypasses.

People contributed, but they didn't contribute enough. Otherwise we wouldn't now have a major deficit issue.

grizzly1911

PaulF81 wrote: »

People contributed, but they didn't contribute enough. Otherwise we wouldn't now have a major deficit issue.

It may have escaped you but the real reason we have the underlying defecit is the rising number of inactive people not in effective employment and that the fact that we consume so much from outside the UK.

This is compounded by individuals and corporations aggressively avoiding tax and a small number abusing the welfare system.

It is not necessarily the relative level of contribution it is the the number actually making it.

If we had a couple of million more people in worthwhile productive employment, with due taxes paid by all, would we be having this debate?

Having paid taxes for 40 years or more, a good proportion at the high rate are you seriously saying we have under contributed? We will always have people that can't afford to contribute a full wack but that is life as long, if they have paid what the government degrees a fair and proper that is good enough.

PaulF81

Might want to compare tax avoidance and benefits fraud to the state pension and NHS bill. Not saying that cuts in all wasteful areas aren't necessary, but where is the incentive to be prudent in a budget if you know absolute budgets are going to increase year on year?

I am not saying that there should be no entitlement, just the entitlement should match the realistic input that approaching and current retirees made to the system inflation adjusted.

Look at the comparative size of pensioner benefits in comparison to what they where when the pension was introduced for example. I think a rebalancing of pensions would be wholly appropriate, a 5% cut in NHS budget and freezing of pension increases would save over 16 billion straight away.



Want to tell me the total expenditure on education or out of work benefits as a comparison?

As for tax avoidance, global companies it could be argued can simply up sticks and move somewhere cheaper. Certainly wouldn't be beneficial for uk employment bearing in mind the level of income tax and national insurance paid as a result of that employment, together with the reduction in working tax credit or dole.

The undying structural deficit wouldn't be there in the main if it wasn't for this:




Well in excess of inflation.

grizzly1911

PaulF81 wrote: »

Might want to compare tax avoidance and benefits fraud to the state pension and NHS bill.

I am not saying that there should be no entitlement, just the entitlement should match the realistic input that approaching and current retirees made to the system inflation adjusted.

Look at the comparative size of pensioner benefits in comparison to what they where when the pension was introduced for example. I think a rebalancing of pensions would be wholly appropriate, a 5% cut in NHS budget and freezing of pension increases would save over 16 billion straight away.



Want to tell me the total expenditure on education or out of work benefits as a comparison?

As for tax avoidance, global companies it could be argued can simply up sticks and move somewhere cheaper. Certainly wouldn't be beneficial for uk employment bearing in mind the level of income tax and national insurance paid as a result of that employment, together with the reduction in working tax credit or dole.

The undying structural deficit wouldn't be there in the main if it wasn't for this:




Well in excess of inflation.

I didn't say that avoidance was a massive figure I said it compounded it.

I also said that it was the volume of contribution that wasn't being generated by having growing numbers of economically inactive souls in the country. A mere 9 million people not contributing other than through consumption taxes..

It depends what you measure inflation against. I would expect costs to increase fastser in the NHS than many other sectors, spending on new treatments, installation of expensive diagnostic/treatment hardware, new building as old departments are centralised into sites of expertise and to rationalise running costs not to mention the ever growing UK population, including x million immigrants.

Edit:- Not to mention the cost of reorganisations every 3 years or so, apart from ideological changes and IT.

PaulF81

grizzly1911 wrote: »

I didn't say that avoidance was a massive figure I said it compounded it.

I also said that it was the volume of contribution that wasn't being generated by having growing numbers of economically inactive souls in the country. A mere 9 million people not contributing other than through consumption taxes..

It depends what you measure inflation against. I would expect costs to increase fastser in the NHS than many other sectors, spending on new treatments, installation of expensive diagnostic/treatment hardware, new building as old departments are centralised into sites of expertise and to rationalise running costs not to mention the ever growing UK population, including x million immigrants.

And how is that excessive inflation later generations problems? If we didn't promise every cutting edge unaffordable treatment under the sun that figure for NHS inflation would be far lower.

It was no different for defence in terms of inflation differential. Didn't stop the procurement and support budgets being cut (cut, not real terms cuts mind) during the 12 disastrous years of labour rule. Killed a few chums of mine that did.