I already pay – very handsomely – for the NHS.
In this Scrubbing Up, former Labour health minister Lord Norman Warner and Jack O’Sullivan, head of a social policy consultancy, who have written a paper for the think tank Reform, set out their thoughts – including a £10 monthly membership fee.
You might think that all adults (with some exemptions) paying a £10 monthly NHS membership fee would have little impact on an organisation with a budget running at £130 billion a year.
But it’s a change that just might help rescue the NHS from its combined care and cash crisis.
What the fuck do these vile charlatans think all this national insurance payments I’ve been making are for? No. Absolutely not. And if that is the price, then allow me to stop paying NI and look after myself with private insurance.
That could all begin to change by making NHS membership a key element of citizenship, creating a new relationship between the state and individuals, ‘co-producing’ personal health.
Each year, you would have a Health MOT when you and the NHS would agree responsibilities for self-care and services in the coming year.
And the £10 a month, collected with the council tax, would go straight into developing impoverished local community health services.
Go fuck yourselves. I neither want nor need an annual MoT and will refuse flatly to comply. And, no, I do not need to pay membership because, having paid NI for over thirty years with very little call on the NHS, I am a net contributor. And as for my own responsibilities – I already manage that perfectly well without state interference.
They tried this in Germany a few years back. I lasted less than two years, because;
1; Doctors were starting to refuse to collect
2; People were refusing to pay.
3; The health insurance firms were having to pay out more in admin costs than they were collecting.
They gave up.
€10 per quarter. Funny how they all seem to come up with the same “rounded figure” for these things.
If government didn’t waste tax payers money on ridiculous wars the NHS funding crisis would be solved. And/or divert all tobacco and alcohol duty directly to the NHS. Off the top of my head that’d be c.£15,000,000,000 pa, which would pay for the construction and running of several new major hospitals EVERY year.
“…If government didn’t waste tax payers money on ridiculous wars …”
Not to mention unwanted social engineering, ludicrous vanity projects, an vastly overpaid & overstaffed (at higher levels) public sector, donations to corrupt foreign governments, danegeld to our Euro-masters, oh, the list is almost endless.
But I suppose pigs might fly (after LR’s singing lessons, of course).
Yes, I would rather pay for private health insurance because it’s cheaper than NI and the waiting times are shorter. Plus people don’t want pay NI otherwise it wouldn’t be compulsory, so it’s unethical anyway.
I love ideas such as this. What I like about it is that it draws attention to precisely what sensible people, including politicians before the get elected, have been saying for ages, which is that, because of its monopolistic nature, the NHS is carrying weight which it was never intended to carry. Specifically, the NHS was never designed to carry the burden of ‘Public Health’. That may seem to be an odd thing to say, but it is only so because of the confusion created by the word ‘health’.
In reality, ‘Public Health’ is an extension of ‘health’ to ‘safety’. Public Health should really be called ‘Public Safety’.
It is really rather obvious, when you think about it. For example, the reason for smoking bans in ‘public’ places is said to be for the protection of workers. What else can this protection be but ‘safety’? According to the zealots (aka charlatans), smoking in pubs is dangerous for bar staff. It is dangerous because it might just possibly, some time in the far future, almost certainly not before they are very old, affect their general health.
Suppose that our government wanted to avoid the latest persecution of smokers (and ex-smokers who like ecigs) represented by the latest directive from the fascists, how could that be done? Very easily. Just split Safety from Health. When you think about it, it has been obvious for years.
I agree with you I really object to this sort of bullshit.
I see my GP probably once every 5 to 6 years if that, the only time I have ever used a hospital was for the birth of my first child, child 2 and 3 were born at home, and an accident when I was 8.
I am lucky in that I rarely get sick.
I have an inveterate loathing of hospitals and have a hospital phobia, I would rather die at home than risk a Hospital (I had a hugely traumatic hospital visit and stay when I was 8 years old and I was hit by a car on my way home from school in those days there were no standards of care and the hospital I was in was appalling, hence my phobia).
So all the NI I have ever paid is being used by the people who are always in the bloody Doctors or A&E, I don’t mean the really sick (no problem with the really sick) but the hypochondriacs.
Why should those of us who rarely use the services be made to pay for those that abuse the system and are always in and out.
Maybe if A&E charged time wasters that could work, then only the ones who use it all the time would be penalised instead of making us all pay for A/ the glut of NHS managers who seem to pay themselves silly money to fuck the NHS over and B/ the vast amount of wastage that the NHS seem to generate.
It seems to me that all the services we pay for , councils hospitals and schools etc. are all very good at “using” our money but it seems to me that the levels of wastage are high because the people working within these services don’t care how much of our taxes they waste.
Examples include street light timers not changed with the clock changes. Unnecessary council functions and jollies abroad, NHS managers who think their higher wages are more important than staff on the ground.
Inadequate computer systems that keep sending letters to incorrect addresses no matter how many times you change your address and “standard letters” that are pointless and unnecessary.
If these people were more careful with our money instead of not giving a toss because it’s not coming out of their pocket (generally they don’t work in the areas they live) then maybe we would not all be paying through the nose and still expected to pay more.
Dear Longrider
” … creating a new relationship between the state and individuals, ‘co-producing’ personal health.”
I.e. making us more like livestock than we already are.
“And the £10 a month, collected with the council tax … “
Otherwise known as a poll tax. £10 a month this week and rising in leaps and bounds once the livestock have become accustomed to it.
Can’t wait to pay it …
DP
It might work. Contributors over fifteen years would have bronze membership would pay 80p a month. Those who have contributed over twenty years would have silver and pay only 40p. Twenty-five years, gold, you are now paid up and can enjoy free (at the point of care) health treatment. ONLY if dentists, opticians and non-prescription medicines come under that umbrella. Otherwise, GFY.
Edit: perhaps the metallic grading could enhance ones levels of entitlement other than genuine medical needs.