There is nothing special about the nhs

lisyloo

westernpromise wrote: »

I'm in that demographic that pays most of the income tax. I look at the whining, entitled rabble that I subsidise, and frankly, I don't think they're worth it; I don't think they deserve it; and they certainly aren't grateful for it.

Think I’ve said it before but we’re grateful for the care we’ve received for MIL and FIL.
FIL did national service to rebuild after the war and MiL worked from 14-72 (despite being arthritic since age 40).
Not sure why they don’t deserve to be looked after in their old age, but thanks anyway.

peterbaker

lisyloo wrote: »

Are you saying you would like massive tax increases to pay for free personal care all round so the rich can pass on their inheritances?
Just to be clear I’m not in favour of that.

I am not sure what the hangup is with "rich" and "poor" ... the point is that all should be involved in funding society's basic needs through central and local government.

"A rich man may more easily pass through the eye of a needle than enter the kingdom of God" - is that the hangup? Many of us of an age were brought up with that drilled into us so much so that I just regurgitated it without looking up a single word!

It isn't a very useful adage, is it?

If an elderly person dies and leaves a nice car for one of the rellies, were they rich? A mortgage-free house? A mansion? A bucket of cash and gold? Rich?

That isn't the proper test of fairness.

The proper test is how they contributed to society when they were alive. Did they pay their taxes? Were those taxes the stupid low ones that have persisted since the 1980s? Should they have paid more?

You bet they should - at all levels. So there should perhaps be a mansion tax. Obviously there should still be even higher marginal rates of tax for those who have more money coming in than they rally know what to do with - I recall 83% applied once upon a time and we lost a few "rich" people to other domiciles who didn't believe in higher taxes, only in their own greed?

Listening to the current batch of politicians spouting rubbish on Question Time about their postulations of indirect inverse effects of reducing tax to increase the overall tax take, and then repeating what you heard here as if it deserves credence is a bit worrying

I think you are misunderstanding average.

No not really. My mathematical abilities are superior to most

I think you are diluting the real problem by encouraging your readers to look at whole of life survival statistics when, just like the burden on hospitals, you should just be looking at the periods of survivors' lives when the likelihood of needing care are greatest. Age 65 or 66 - state retirement age is perhaps one line you have drawn for your "20% of men" statistic - you don't say when retirement / senior citizenship starts in your book.

Approx 20% of men don’t make it to retirement, so there’s plenty of the population that die before reaching the age when they need full time care. There is also a period where people can manage at home.
It’s hard to find stats but according to this article (US) it’s 40% of “seniors” who will need long term care. So 60% die before they need it and thats the % of “seniors” which excludes the 20% of men who die before becoming senior.

Might I recommend that you slice your population sample by annual age bands and then look at those in the five or ten years either side of average life expectancy. Why draw your comparison line at any retirement age? Pensioners should still pay tax. Same as students should pay tax on their income whether it be their own earnings or given to them by the state. Everyone needs to be in the habit of contributing!

Do you dismiss the special needs of that ten or twenty year wide age band at the peak of society as just the needs of the 40% of some possibly 40 year wide cohort i.e. as if their chance of not needing residential care is the same as for younger seniors in the same enormous and not very useful cohort sample? Why are you even trying to discriminate between those that (inevitably) are most likely to need care - i.e. between those who have been lucky enough already to have enjoyed maybe 20 years of retirement and then pop off quietly and inexpensively in their sleep, and those who then are most likely to have to endure up to say 15 years more as an increasing burden to society and are currently not even allowed to spend their life savings on anything else than their own care??

We are in agreement that the tax take needs to be raised just not on exactly how.

Because UK has been suckered into a low wage low tax economy for so long, it requires some thinking out of the usual box. You aren't going to solve anything by tweaking the existing system, especially if you tweak it down further ... :rotfl:

As discussed on question time last night sometimes this can be achieved by cuts in the tax rate I.e. tax rate cuts incentivises more business to come to the uk and increase the nominal tax take.

And you find that credible?

Steve57

Arklight wrote: »

It would be better to move a successful "socialised" medical provision, like they have in Europe. Usually your insurance is provided by the state and the care is private. You can't be uninsured or priced out of care. You can choose your physician.

But this isn't what the Tories, and it's only the Tories that will privatise the NHS, want. They want a US system of unaffordable, profit driven treatment, that rinses people of their cash when they're at their most vulnerable and introduces medical apartheid between the rich and not so rich.

Note, as most people who've been unlucky enough to be ill in America can attest. There is a lot of medical treatment available there. There is very little medical care.

This is so true. Want the tories want and they want it for everything is that the 30% of approved people can have everything, good housing, good education and good health care for eg and that is all that matters, the tiers beneath that can fight amongst them selves for the scraps for all they care. In fact they only really care about the richest 1% but have to tow along a few more and trick another layer of people to vote against their own real needs in favour of feeding the already rich.
I see this as an actual ambition of a tory lead brexit government. It is the hard right of money laundering, corrupt crony capitalists that occupy those seats in parliament. One of their other ambitions is to protect the city of London and its connections to the British sponsored tax free havens that launder the worlds filthy money, not of penny of which is there for legitimate reasons. The EU on the other hand has been on their back to clean it up for decades, something they, the tories want to avoid at all costs.