Sorry, but the £7.whatever you pay as a prescription charge is hilarious. Do you really think that the drugs you get are paid for by that? Err, no - nowhere near in the vast majority of cases, and by a long shot too. That charge is a pittance, and hardly worth mentioning as a charge that offsets drug costs. Dentistry? Yep. Prime example of what the NHS could end up like, and also a prime example of how people avoid going to the dentist because of the cost. Labour did good things for the NHS. Waiting lists dropped, funding increased, the Foundation programme was redone and healthcare science started its big shakeup. The ConDem coalition can make savings, and they're needed, but they're looking like they're going to totally screw up the system.
I haven't had a proper look through the reforms but the main selling points already have me worried. GP's in control of budgets? Sorry but I did not realise that a medical degree included accounting and how to run multi million pound budgets. I would rather my GP concentrated on looking after his patients than running a business which is pretty much what he would be doing.
No no, don't worry it is fine. If politics has taught us anything it is that if some guy at the top likes you, you get appointed to whatever position they fancy even if you have little or no experience in that area, that has clearly worked every time
In fact, there're some hospitals in England at least, that are run by private health care firms, and contracted out to the NHS. Wikipedia has a table showing the results of a study that looked at that back in 2007 on this page. You can see that the USA was spending nearly double what others(apart from Norway) were per capita, for not very good results.
Erm aren’t most GPs self employed or Partners in a practice. Therefore apart from the few Salaried GPs they're already running businesses and balancing budgets. Still don't want them running county budgets though, I want them looking after patients not increasing paperwork.
Healthcare is something which should not be made profitable, that is not to say money should be lost, no, but the goal should not be that of making money, a quick buck. When the goal of making money is on the agenda, which is always the case when private enterprices are involved, that's how they survive and flourish, then you are, when deciding to have private corporations provide healthcare for the population - inviting trouble. People are bound to get hurt. I hope that this will never be brought into existence.
The thought of not having the NHS is uncomfortable for me, but I wonder how long it can go on. People eat, drink and smoke themselves to death, and the cost of looking after people is getting more expensive as new cures and drugs are found, which people expect. Will I get the value from it? I'm young and healthy generally, both my fiancée and I have had a couple of procedures in the past year and the care has been up and down - generally good, but if we were paying for it I don't think there would have been the same slip-ups. Ofcourse, if we were paying for it we would have been paying through the nose (and that procedure probably costs a lot in itself). When/if I'm in the 40% (or 50%) tax bracket will I look less kindly on the NHS? Sadly there's not an opt out or an affordable alternative.
Not to disagree, but health care costs a lot even when you make zero profit and use efficient business practices. Employees need to be paid, and that pay needs to be high enough to make enough people actually take those jobs. Medicine, scanning equipment, prescriptions, research, etc all cost large sums of money. Using Cthippo as an example, an ambulance is always going to require money to cover the vehicle, fuel for the trip, any supplies used treating the patient, and enough to cover 24/7 wages for the EMTs who are always on standby, not just wages for the trip. Be that ambulance owned by a private non-profit business or government run, somewhere someone has to pay for that.
Since I'm unemployed and without insurance I'm having to pay out of pocket for my meds. One of them is over $100 a month by itself, that's more than $1 a pill for even the generic! For someone who is unemployed $150 a month just for drugs is really a hardship. As far as funding healthcare, it really needs to be a system where everyone, including the healthy, pay into it. Currently many young people don't carry health insurance because it's expensive, and we know that if you're buying it individually the insurance companies are going to go out of their way to avoid paying any claims. My mom and stepdad pay something like $1200 a month for a family of 4. Healthcare is something everyone needs to have and it's something everyone needs to pay for.
Did I ever say that the prescription charge covered the cost of the preparation. No. I just said the NHS isn't completely free. Even if the £7 did cover the cost, I know my GP well enough that he'd recommend that I buy the generic off-the-counter equivalent. However, I also know that the English NHS makes around £400m per year from prescription charges alone and that in Wales, there are no such charges. Similarly the dentistry charges are often far inferior to the actual costs involved. That still doesn't mean it's free at the point of delivery.
That bit about young people without health insurance really worries me. I'm the only one of my friends ranging from 19 to 25 with health insurance. Perhaps some are covered as dependants under their parents' plans and I'm not aware of it, but I can safely say that none have their own. That's scary. What if one of them gets severely injured and they aren't a dependant? I can accept that there are plenty of reasons to be unhappy with paying into healthcare which others may abuse and exploit. Maybe you question how much the health providers earn, maybe you question why some people get prescriptions for things which don't even seem like a big issue. Bottom line in my mind, everyone needs health care. If there are problems then work to fix them, but don't take away the care which many people depend on.
It's worrying to think that in the UK we pay our national insurance to pay for the NHS. If it gets privatised, I guarantee we shall still be paying out national insurance at the same rate *rolls eyes* stealth taxes galore!
Smokers generate more income to the government through taxation then it costs to treat them for smoking related diseases. I imagine alcohol and obesity on the other hand probably don't pay for themselves. Do you get value from the NHS? That's a tough question as at the moment it's a service you don't use that much but over your life span i'm sure it all evens out. Your young and healthy now but tomorrow you or someone in your family could end up extremely ill. I sincerely hope not but it could happen. Having seen people around me have family members suddenly become terminally ill you realise how much we get from the NHS and despite what we hear in the press the level of care is very good. If your girlfriend becomes pregnant you will realise how much she will be using the NHS before and after the birth. Imagine if you had to pay market rate for that? I'm not in the 40% tax bracket but my wife is and we are also covered by private medical care through her employer. We still see our GP and if anything happens to us its still an NHS hospital we get taken too and treated in. All the private coverage really gives you is faster treatment in a private hospital for non emergency treatment like a dodgy knee. We both still feel we get value from the NHS and we don't mind subsiding those who people who need the NHS more than we do.
When you're in the 50% tax bracket you still probably won't pay as much tax as you use. Unless you get into the top 10% of earners in the country, you're getting more from the taxman than you're giving him. I sometimes wish that everyone in the country would be forced to realise that only about 1 in 10 in this country are capable of paying for the standard of living we enjoy. All this nonsense about scroungers costing good working class folk so much money ignore the fact that good working class folk cost an arm and a leg themselves - they just rarely realise how much the services they receive cost.
Unless you're getting National Insurance Credits in which the DWP pays for your National Insurance Contributions while you're out of work. Some people are out of work for upto ten years... they are the ones who people get angry about bud. With fair reason lets be honest right? The government pays for everything for them, and we're the ones who fund the government. If you meant something else I may have failed to understand what you meant, but thats how I read it.
What I'm meaning is that you probably don't pay for the government. The top 30-40% pay for the government. The people who've been on benefits for 10 years might cost x in taxes per year, but your average householder who works a low wage job costs 1/2 x in taxes per year. The point I'm trying to make is that if people were a little more aware of this fact in general you'd see far more opposition to the idea of getting rid of the NHS. Put simply, for 60% of this country there's no way in hell they could afford to privately purchase the level of care they receive right now - because they're paid for by others.
Ahh right, my bad buddy. I do see what you mean, but as the NHS is something everyone contributes to, doesn't that balance itself out nicely?
No, it doesn't, which is my point. There is the simple fact that the rich in this country pay for healthcare for the poor. Hell, the rich pay for healthcare for the average earners too. There have been arguments made (here and elsewhere) suggesting that we should do away with the socialist NHS and let people take care of themselves. What I'm saying is, if you want things to improve then doing away with the NHS isn't the answer - because unless you're earning some serious serious moolah, then you already can't afford what you get.
I see I see. I'm going to guess it's only the higher rate tax earners who would wish to "do away" with the NHS right? To be fair I've not used the NHS alot, Never really get ill or break myself (also not the greatest fan of medically inclinded people)... but as said earlier I suppose it works out over a lifetime.
