Funding the NHS: Is it finally time for a new approach?

[Northerner]

Even by the usual standards of New Year pressures, it has been a traumatic week for much of the NHS.

In England, an unprecedented call has gone out from NHS leaders that a month's worth of non-urgent operations and appointments should be postponed. That's been echoed in other parts of the UK.

The prime minister and the health secretary, responsible for the service in England, have apologised to patients.

There's a growing sense at a senior level at Westminster that enough is enough and that a new approach is needed. The events of this week, with stories of patients enduring long waits in ambulances and on trolleys in A&E, have reignited the debate about the future of the NHS and social care.

There is now significant momentum behind calls for a long-term cross-party solution. Taking the issue away from the heat of short-term political point-scoring is the aim of those who want a new consensus in the 70th birthday year of the NHS.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42582800

 

[mikeyB]

Finally, they’ve realised it’s not party political. If it takes such a crisis to change attitudes, paricularly Jeremy Hunt’s, then all to the good. It just takes money.

 

[grovesy]

I doubt Hunt and May will.

 

[trophywench]

Well something needs to be done it's a certain fact and I couldn't care less who says or does what, don't even care if the salvation IS a form of privatisation - as long as it gets sorted one way or the other.

If the 'NI' fund is how we pay for it, the first thing they can do, is stop making workers NI contributions cease, once we are at State retirement age. It's always been a fact of life that little ones and old ones between em need to NHS more than anyone in between. However nobody has to pay anything at all until they are earning money - so everyone's account is already overdrawn before they get their first pay packet - let alone how much we need to 'withdraw' after retirement age. We pay income tax on our pensions (if they're above £x a year) so why not pay NI too? I have always said, I'd happily pay more tax, since I now pay the lowest rate of tax since I left school in 1966 and that's ridiculous - I don't care what they call it, it needs to be done is all there is to it.

 

[Hepato-pancreato]

Simple. Too many people accessing service than it ever expected to cater for. Typical example M6 50 years ago did what it was designed to do. Now it’s like a car park . Too many vehicles trying to use same roads,that wern’t Intended for so many vehicles.