Should NHS go private?

[John]

Should NHS go private, you pay health insurance to be treated.

 

Should NHS only cover life threating emercencies? I.E. Car crash.

 

Should NHS go 100% private? No insurance = tough.

 

As one person said in the chat room, it prevent people coming into Britain for free treatment at the expense of the tax payer.

 

Does private have the best interest of the patient when it is an expensive operation. Will they cut cost/corners to keep up with their profit margins?

[DaBouncer]

I'd support an insurance funded NHS rather than the freebies everyone gets. Even if that means I suffer.

However I can't see my tax money going down... so what would be the point?

[Killian]

no, and i bet we'd still have to pay National Insurance contributions.

[Ned Ludd]

Before Thatcher, Major and Blair started their NHS reforms, Britain had the most cost effective Health care system in the world. It's problem was that it was starved of funds to a degree that only poor countries in the EU like Greece were spending less on health care provision.

OK there's always room for improvement but to take the private US system as an example: it's administrative costs are huge compared to the NHS (even after the tinkering of the 3 named above!) The degree of fraud and corruption in the US is absolutely staggering as insurance is milked to the hilt by individual medics and by international health care conglomerates (who have already got their hooks into our NHS)

Not a good idea.

[slimsid2000]

No it shouldn't.

 

What would that achieve?

 

Of course we can't treat people from other countries but if you are British you should expect it as of right. Even if you got a tax cut you would need to pay a lot of tax in the first place to be better of with a pay as you go system. It is much more likely that health insurance costs would more than outweigh any tax cut.

[Abdul]

Originally posted by slimsid2000

It is much more likely that health insurance costs would more than outweigh any tax cut.

 

Very true. One of my American colleagues told me her family had to pay $300 a month for health insurance alone - on top of any other taxes.