I'm going to ramble on here Col, and it's not to be critical it's because I'm thinking it through as I write..... Because the system you propose is very similar to the US system, which clearly has different levels of quality. The vast majority GPs are not part of the NHS at the moment and they never have been, they are all small businesses with NHS contracts. You would have to bring them into the NHS or pay them to collect the consultation fees for the NHS. I'd guess you'd end up with NHS GPs and private GPs. Your system means that the richest 25% of the population pay for the other 75%, or supplement what the majority pay, and don't actually have the same access to the things that they are paying for. It's incredibly socialist Col, I'm shocked at you . They do this already of course because they pay more tax, but your system would mean they continue to pay more tax and on top would have to pay private health insurance, which in the US takes up about 15% of income. So in effect you are taxing the rich (if you call people earning £75k rich) an extra 15%. So it's clearly not worth earning more than £74,999 for most of the 25%, because you are not only taxed on the additional earnings but have to pay for your healthcare directly - you'd have to be earning over £100k to end up with the same disposable income as before. Much more if you have a chronic health problem. It would have the advantage of making it very explicit to everyone how expensive health care is, which is no bad thing. That's why I prefer a universal obligatory health insurance system, taking it out of general taxation ( which should fall as a result - ok I am now on fantasy island) and doubtless including different levels of premium according to income. I'd like my annual statement to show me how much I've contributed and how much I've cost the system. If I want to buy extra levels of service (largely faster access and nicer facilities rather than better quality clinical care as it works at the moment) it's my choice to get additional private health insurance. But for me access to (high quality) health care for all is the sign of a civilised society, my concern is that the NHS often does not provide this and also that it's taken for granted, no one should think they are getting something for nothing. Actually I think we both want the same thing (I may be wrong) and are just testing out different ways of getting there. Yay dialectics! As I said above, funding is just one part of the equation. Doubtless we need more, but I fear that there is something broken in the organisation which means we wouldn't see the improvements expected with extra cash. I'll bore you with an example of the perversity of the system at the moment. My industry, branded prescription medicines which we develop and sell, has negotiated an agreement with the government to manage NHS costs. Once spending on these types of drugs exceeds £8bn in a financial year (less than 8% of the NHS budget) the industry reimburses the extra spending to the NHS. In other words we have capped the NHS risk on innovative, patented medicines. It's a great deal for the country. The idea was that the money we give back would be invested in providing new drugs which would challenge the normal budgets. That gives us an incentive to regard the UK (or it may be just England and Wales) as an important place to launch new products early. Stupidly, the industry neglected to make this a compulsory part of the system. In reality, the reimbursed cash has been used to prop up failing services, not on medicines. As a result doctors and patients in the UK don't have the same choice of medicines, especially new medicines, that other western countries do. Sorry for droning on so much.
Health insurance is a very sensible thing for anyone to buy IMO. A small amount assuming you're relatively young and healthy and the level of service is just so much better it's untrue.
Good stuff. Yes, I think we both do want the same thing. I was just putting "something" out there as an alternative to what we have now. The £75k was just plucked out of nowhere tbh. I certainly don't have the answers, although you're right in that I wouldn't mind the richest in society helping the poorest with their healthcare (I'm really not the rabid right winger that you suspect me to be!). At any rate, I am convinced that something has to change and that we need a full and frank debate, without people ranting and raving that the NHS is "sacred" and mustn't be privatised. I don't want it privatised, but there has to be some private healthcare mixed in, in some capacity imo.
Strong rumours going around that Mugabe is about to peg it. So there's at least some good news tonight.
When he goes, what a contrast there will be to the universal outpouring of sympathy and respect afforded to Nelson Mandela
20 years ago I worked with a South African woman (a very left wing one who had left during apartheid) who swore that Mugabe was riddled with syphilis.
The Will of God in Action The Anglican Church has been told by God to muzzle it's US branch (2.3 million members) and their heretical attitudes to LGBT people (they say they really are people!), in favour of the rather more, shall we say, conservative, outlook of their African affiliates (57.2 million members), who are homophobes. The 25m European Anglicans (presumably mostly British) are wringing their hands in anguish, and the outstandingly wet Archbishop of Canterbury has said sorry for the hurt and upset caused to LGBT Anglicans. But God (and the numbers) tell him to remind LGBT people that their nature is sinful. Don't you just wish God would be a little more explicit sometimes? If this wasn't so pathetic it would be funny.
Thanks, that prompted me to do a little reading. And in his case the future looked very much like the distant past, where he lived. Ancient Greece preferably for him. Did you know: He was not only against immigration, but did not want people of non white races to have equal rights? His burning ambition was to be Viceroy of India? He wanted unilateral nuclear disarmament? He thought Airey Neave and Mountbatten were killed by the CIA rather than Irish terrorists? He believed 'values' exist in a transcendental Platonic realm, unchanging and impossible to destroy? He supported legalisation of homosexuality and abolishment of the death penalty? He thought Jesus Christ was stoned to death by the Jews rather than crucified by the Romans? His vision of the future resulting from immigration was not riots, economic problems, cultural changes, but full on race based civil war? The only time he was actually in a position of responsibility within a government was between 1955 and 1958? He thought the UK should abandon alliance with the US and form a pact with the USSR in 1990, to protect against the 'threat' of a reunited Germany? When asked how he would liked to be remembered he replied 'I should have liked to have been killed in the war' (he had risen from private to brigadier working in intelligence, but never saw action)? A strange, academically brilliant, contradictory man who's addiction to 'principle' led him to resign time and time again. There can be no doubt that he believed every single word that he ever said and equally that he believed he was always right. When he was posted as an intelligence officer to Burma in WW2, Orde Wingate asked a colleague to restrain him if he succumbed to his urge to 'beat his [Powell's] brains in'
I read the Times actually. Which is also propaganda. It's all true, though necessarily abbreviated. Powell was a fascinating man whose legacy and motivations have been misrepresented and misunderstood by many, including, I suspect, you. His obsession with race was not because he was racist (he gave a great speech in the Commons in the 50s lamenting the treatment of Mau Mau prisoners) but because he had a vision of what Britain was that he wanted to protect, at all costs. I don't have many areas of agreement with him, but have no doubt he would humiliate me in debate 100 times out of 100. The world isn't as black and white (pun intended) as you think Facto.
I've never quite grasped the logic of why someone tries to pigeon-hole a person by trying to predict which paper they read. If they read one at all, how does that define them?
