Can the UK afford the NHS (in its current form)?

michaels

BobQ wrote: »

I think the issue is that it is perfectly sustainable to have the NHS provided that people are willing to pay the taxes to fund it. There are other models and the US represents one of them.

As a nation the US spends far more per capita on healthcare than the UK. The advantage of their system is that those who can afford to pay get good treatment but pay a lot for it, those who cannot afford to pay get a modest level of care and are denied some treatment by affordability.

So you have a choice, Tax funding that delivers good treatment for all, rationed by affordability to a degree based on need or a US system that rations care on ability to pay and costs much more, but delivers better care if you can afford it.

There are other models like France and Australia, but they cost about the same as the UK. Pesonally I am happy to pay taxes for the NHS. If I thought that paying private insurance would give me the same care and a reduction in taxes I would not mind.

But at the moment the NHS is 'rationed' so that those who are not stopped by reasons of employment from attending GPs in the day time nor prevented by income from getting free prescriptions probably get a better service than those who are working and have to consider the costs of taking time off work and paying for a prescription.

BobQ

michaels wrote: »

But at the moment the NHS is 'rationed' so that those who are not stopped by reasons of employment from attending GPs in the day time nor prevented by income from getting free prescriptions probably get a better service than those who are working and have to consider the costs of taking time off work and paying for a prescription.

As I said above the NHS is rationed by affordability.

I accept what you say. Most GPs offer early morning or evening appointments but I agree that working people have more problems accessing services. But that is true of lots of things. The plan to move to 7 day operations might help this.

Affording a prescription is a concern for some, but most people do not pay for prescriptions (those under 18 and over 60, those with medical exemptions,) and those that do probably do not have this expense very often. Also if you know you need prescriptions for a short period or regularly you do not pay for more than 3 in a quarter.

zagubov

Has anyone asked the public how much they'd like to pay for it?
For example by giving them an idea how much of their tax goes on it, (or still call it NI) and asking how much they'd pay for more, and if so what extra they'd want for their money?
Later surgeries?
More house calls? (Was it Gordon Brown who oversaw the new contracts that rules this out)?
More catastrophic illness treatments (e.g cancer drugs)?

CLAPTON

zagubov wrote: »

Has anyone asked the public how much they'd like to pay for it?
For example by giving them an idea how much of their tax goes on it, (or still call it NI) and asking how much they'd pay for more, and if so what extra they'd want for their money?
Later surgeries?
More house calls? (Was it Gordon Brown who oversaw the new contracts that rules this out)?
More catastrophic illness treatments (e.g cancer drugs)?

well historically it has been shown that when asked people will pay a lot more for a better NHS : history also shows that people tend not to actually vote in favour.

The benefit of a partly free market (where people can pay to supplement the NHS) of course it that people can vote pragmatically.

Filo25

CLAPTON wrote: »

well historically it has been shown that when asked people will pay a lot more for a better NHS : history also shows that people tend not to actually vote in favour.

The benefit of a partly free market (where people can pay to supplement the NHS) of course it that people can vote pragmatically.

That's certainly appeared to be true more often than not historically, but you could argue Labour got elected over the period 1997 - 2010 with one of their core promises to invest more in the NHS.

You can effectively already (partially) supplement the NHS with private health insurance in the UK in any case.

Obviously that could be broadened further, but for now I suspect a fair proportion of the issues facing the NHS are due to funding shortfalls (with a relatively low spend on healthcare compared to many other advanced countries) and frequent restructuring leading to inefficiencies to the system as it is to any issues with free at the point of delivery universal healthcare.

Obviously you could expand payments from users but after putting in sufficient safeguards to enable free use for those on low incomes and the bureaucracy of administering that system, its hard to predict how great any impacts would be.

CLAPTON

Filo25 wrote: »

That's certainly appeared to be true more often than not historically, but you could argue Labour got elected over the period 1997 - 2010 with one of their core promises to invest more in the NHS.

You can effectively already (partially) supplement the NHS with private health insurance in the UK in any case.

Obviously that could be broadened further, but for now I suspect a fair proportion of the issues facing the NHS are due to funding shortfalls (with a relatively low spend on healthcare compared to many other advanced countries) and frequent restructuring leading to inefficiencies to the system as it is to any issues with free at the point of delivery universal healthcare.

Obviously you could expand payments from users but after putting in sufficient safeguards to enable free use for those on low incomes and the bureaucracy of administering that system, its hard to predict how great any impacts would be.

so the best thing is to just freeze the system as it is now ?

zagubov

We could just hand it over to private companies like we did for our national security in Manchester.

zagubov

This is starting to remind me of that time they forced MI6 to get a private HR company to assess their recruitment procedures, where a whole cohort of recruits had their home details sent to an outside agency and then had to to be re-housed at Joe Taxpayer's expense.

CLAPTON

zagubov wrote: »

This is starting to remind me of that time they forced MI6 to get a private HR company to assess their recruitment procedures, where a whole cohort of recruits had their home details sent to an outside agency and then had to to be re-housed at Joe Taxpayer's expense.

I guess mid staffs was the fault of private enterprise?
and I guess Rotherham's police, social services and local politicians were all outsourced too?


isolated mistakes don't prove a lot.

Generali

zagubov wrote: »

This is starting to remind me of that time they forced MI6 to get a private HR company to assess their recruitment procedures, where a whole cohort of recruits had their home details sent to an outside agency and then had to to be re-housed at Joe Taxpayer's expense.

And the Government never manages to screw things up?!

If you want to see the difference between state and private provision, look at telecoms. In the early 80s you had to wait 18 months just for the privilege of becoming a customer of BT if you didn't have a line.