at least only 2% is now spent on killing people (sorry, defence I mean) when we are at almost imminent threat of invasion from the Vikings
How do you know that 6.7% of GDP in 2020 is going to be less money than now? How much is our GDP in 2020 going to be? You are saying they will be spending a smaller proportion. That does not mean they will be spending less money. It may well be that 6.7% in 2020 will be the same as 8% in 2016 per capita spending even allowing for inflation!!! You are getting lost in the politics game of poker misrepresenting the argument. % of GDP is not the same as spending less money. Say we cut actual spending back to £3k per capita (from £4k) in 2020 but there was a recession and GDP reduced by 30%. That £3k per capita would be a higher percentage now than the £4k per capita in 2016 was. Yes I know GDP wouldn't drop like that but I am using larger differences to show what I mean. Does no-one ever factor in the fact that we have an NHS and we are comparing to countries where the private sector is a much higher proportion of the healthcare "cost." If we get "value for money" on the NHS and thus it costs less than at a private healthcare company then are we not arguing about incomparable systems here?
You're not factoring in the fact that the NHS is a demand-led service, with demand rising 3-4% every year, mainly due to the rising population and the fact that we're all living longer. 18% of the current population of 66.7 million is now over 65, that's the highest ever, so the NHS has an ever-increasing burden. And the % of GDP spent on the NHS increased every single year from until 2012, when it began to drop for the first time.
Per capita allows for population increases though doesn't it!! GDP is not effective at all to weigh up that argument because GDP does not bare much relation to population. Demand rising 3-4% each year does not mean a higher percentage of GDP needs spending each year unless GDP is not keeping up with population increases and in that scenario where GDP is growing at a slower pace than the population then you have to start asking (as stated above) about the problem of this country becoming an economy of unproductive consumer jobs rather than productive jobs. How has there been such an increase in unproductive labour when Blair tripled university places? You are intermingling things that do not relate to each other. As the population grows then spending per capita should stay the same and thus an actual increase in money but that does not have any relation to some made up figure of "we must spend x% of GDP" because no-one knows what GDP will be nor do they know how many people will create that GDP. I know you will say forecasts will show but then forecasts aren't very accurate these days. You can safely say though that if we spend £4k today per capita then if we have 300k immigrants this year we need to add at least 300k x £4k to our spending. Still doesn't answer whether other countries are receiving better healthcare or is it just costing more for the same or worse? These sort of league tables are not good for making this kind of comparison especially when we have such a different system that is "supposed" to be better value than private healthcare. You say it started dropping in 2012 percentage wise yet per capita it increased from just over $3k in 2012 to just over $4k per capita in 2015. So almost a 30% increase in 3 years despite you saying the % of GDP went down!!! That shows you how much the GDP part is not really the one to look at because it suggests spending has gone down when quite obviously it can't have gone down if 30% per capita spending has been added in 3 years. All you can say is it still is not enough but then we've heard that from the NHS since the year (I) was born and probably before that as well. I don;t mind the NHS getting more money but there has to be a point where all these "need more money" cases are looked into. They can't say "need more money" forever and keep getting it. The whole of our state needs sorting out because there are hands in the pot all over and money is not being spent on the things it is supposed to be spent on.
Apart from doing something really bonkers the Tories are heading for a landslide, in England anyway. Then May starts doing something slightly bonkers in a vague, paranoid, xenophobic sort of way. Channelling her Trump side I guess. I've gone from depressed to rather embaressed by it all. My best mate lives in France, we spend a lot of time trying to explain the home political situation to each other.
I'm sorry the facts don't fit your agenda but the ageing population (over 85's need 4 times the amount of healthcare than under 65's) but presumably you don't think they are important. I certainly agree that the whole thing needs sorting out, the removal of all the profiteering pigs from the NHS trough would be a good place to start.
Imps - if you have so much to say why the **** are you wasting your time posting it on a football forum?
A good friend of mine has just returned from visiting family in Ireland. The reaction whenever the conversation got anywhere near British politics was generally an incredulous "wtf are youse all doing over there?" Have youse all gone mad or what?" Edit: My French friend just throws her arms up in despair when anyone mentions their Presidential election.
Totally agree. There are "profiteering pigs" all over the state though. Big big firms that have built themselves on state money that seems to never be questioned. That isn't a Tory/Labour problem. It is a system problem no matter who is in. The facts not meeting my agenda? You are complaining about a theoretical % of an unknown future GDP figure being reduced without knowing how much money that equates to. It means nothing in real money because it is just a proportion of a figure that will not be known until it happens. What we can say is that per capita actual spending is a real figure and we can take today's and add inflation to get to a 2020 figure. We can also say it isn't enough at the mo and suggest it should be more but we can't just look at percentages of GDP. If our GDP doubled net year the government would look a bit silly spending twice the amount on healthcare and it would look even worse if our GDP halved next year halving the healthcare spend. Still it doesn't get down to the fact that the 8.6% is the total public and private healthcare spend. If we had more private then more would be spent because supposedly it would cost more than the NHS. Costing more does not mean better healthcare. It simply means you spent more. Do these countries actually have vastly superior healthcare systems or do they pay more for a similar service. And if they do get better healthcare is that because of the higher proportion of private healthcare pushing improvements across the board? As for the getting older argument. That is happening in every country. Maybe we should move to the US seeing as they spend 16%+ on healthcare. They must have perfection over there.
Just to break up the monotonous Tory bashing and anti-Tory back patting I spend the other 95% of time on Quora and Disqus.
well it's fairly obvious you don't need to work then! unlike the Tory bashing and anti-Tory back patting lot who spend a few minutes a day writing short comments on here!
fairly obvious? I am self employed. I work from home. I do my orders, then take them to the PO and then back to my cage and my laptop.
but with your God given talent for political satire (and we only see 5% of it) would you not do better in your cage writing a bloody good fictional political thriller? you might even get an MBE!
Nope. I'm quite happy being a poor nobody rather than a bit richer with a blog but 5 bolts on the door because of left wing nut jobs that have to chase down any "open" right wing blogger. Still looking for a safe way to be a bit richer.
I think you'll find left wing nut jobs are pretty thin on the ground because they are actually left wing and guess what, don't want to discriminate against open right wing bloggers!
you will probably find sites to type on that don't find Theresa May complaining about press bias ironic?
