I see three problems, but there is a solution to each. The first is politicians. They are not good at telling the truth. They know it’s a vote loser to suggest anything that could threaten the concept of universal free health care. But we have a problem. Purely tax-based systems are doomed, simply because the old, who consume the majority of care, pay far less tax than those working. Sure, they paid it in the past but not at rates for tomorrow’s technology. This means that the young need to be taxed until the system collapses.
So we need to define a core package from tax and look at insurance and savings plans linked to pensions for the rest. Many spend large amounts of money on holidays and cars but regard health care as a free good handed down by the state. Politicians start squirming here so the solution is simply to take them out of the equation. Supermarkets seem to manage without them, so why not hospitals and GPs? Sure, we need regulators, arbitrators and patient rights but not a political football match every time a bedpan falls to the ground.
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Professor Karol Sikora
'Getting Politicians off our backs' is as right for Health Service providers as it is for all other spheres of our civic life.
The NHS is safe with us is a religious mantra from the Conservatives, the Unite-Labour Party and the Social Democrats. The problem is that the NHS is not a safe institution to use. I challenge anybody not to come up with a horror story of neglect and infection about the NHS. It is not the skill and dedication of the nurses and doctors that is in doubt, after all they are the only ones making the whole edifice work. It is the way we are running a nineteenth century system, with nineteen fifties tractor stats culture in the twentieth first century.
This is a real issue that the two and a half party state will not address, they want you to engage in the Sarah/Samantha/Miriam debate instead.
They are treating the voter with utter contempt and pretending that the 'Rotten Parliament' has not happened.
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In my opinion the problem with healthcare as with much of the UK's welfare system is that NO ONE in political power has ever faced up to economic reality.
The NHS is funded by the National INSURANCE system, which, if it had been set up and run on sound economic and "normal" insurance principles, would probably work fine. Sadly, it's always depended on an ever greater number of people working and earning more and more money in order to fund it to pay today's pensions, healthcare and so on. If the contributions from the past had been wisely invested as an insurance company would do, then that simply wouldn't be so!
The NHS is a Trojan horse for Communism IMHO.
If the "National Insurance Scheme" actually exists, it is a Ponzi Scheme and illegal in any normal understanding of the term.
The NHS is a State-run, administered, regulated de facto monopoly and is systemically dysfunctional for those very reasons.
You simply cannot fix it in any meaningful sense while it continues to be operated as it is now.
@Qunitavoc: I agree. If people were allowed to opt out of the national insurance scheme (in favor of a private sector provider of their choice) that might be a vote winner.
A naive person might expect the Tories to put forward such a proposal, but of course, no such luck.
The US insurance-based system fails mainly because of government intervention (medicare/medicaid) and the AMA cartel's stranglehold.
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