NHS
I had to go to the doctor today. As I live in England and don't have medical insurance (why have it when I am being taxed more for the NHS than medical insurnace would cost me, as we will see later) the doctor was proided by that wondeful institution we call the NHS. Now I'm sure that that last statement was read as sarcastic, and that you realise that the NHS is not a capitalist institution, so you probably expect me to berate the experience and say that the NHS should be scrapped in favor of private medicine. Well, I'm not.
I enjoyed my visit, the doctor saw me on time, he gave me very good advice. In fact, I have had to use the NHS numerous times in my short life, for several operations, some emergencies, some not, and all I can say is that the service I have recieved has been exemplary, no problems. Appart from those six years it took them to dicover that I had an alergy rather than the many other things they tried to blame. So do I think that the NHS is the example which can prove that centralisation creates a bad system? No, I don't, however, I do think that taxation is the wrong way to fund this system. As I had already mentioned I pay for my part of the NHS as al other UK tax payers do through national insurance payments on income. I also mentioned that the payments I make are more than that needed to buy personal health insurance. Why is this? Well, the answer is simple surely. I am not only paying for myself, but also for those others who are unfortunate enough not to be able to pay for themselves. How many of those people are there I wonder... Well there are approximately 1.5m people unemployed in the UK, so for arguements sake, let us say that those are these people, after all, children can be covered by their parents insurnace and the elderly should have savings with which to pay these costs. So that's 1.5m out of 60m people (59.6) or more correctly, 4.7% of economically active people. So that means that for every 21 economically active (working) people there is about one unemployed person. So the burden for those unable to pay medical insurance for themselves falls across 21 people. From a range of insurnace quotes online the average cost works out at £97.07 per month for fully comprehensive insurance with no excess covering the individual and up to 3 children as well, that works out at £4.62 for each of those 21 people in work.
The average pay (only data I could find) was £24,603 or £465 weekly. The national insurance contributions for this wage account for £41.14 a week in national insurance contributions, or £164.56 per month. That's £67.49 surplus above the individual requirement for insurance, that means that for every 21 people in work (using averages) 14 other people can be supported, at the current level of employment. Does this mean that savings are possible if we only taxed for those who are unable to pay for themselves?
Clearly this is a back of the envelope calculation, and the issue isn't quite so simple. The principle still holds though, taxation does not invite efficiency. Why create a cost efficient service if the revenue is guaranteed? A mostly private system would have a direct incentive to improve efficiency, that would surely benefit us all.
I enjoyed my visit, the doctor saw me on time, he gave me very good advice. In fact, I have had to use the NHS numerous times in my short life, for several operations, some emergencies, some not, and all I can say is that the service I have recieved has been exemplary, no problems. Appart from those six years it took them to dicover that I had an alergy rather than the many other things they tried to blame. So do I think that the NHS is the example which can prove that centralisation creates a bad system? No, I don't, however, I do think that taxation is the wrong way to fund this system. As I had already mentioned I pay for my part of the NHS as al other UK tax payers do through national insurance payments on income. I also mentioned that the payments I make are more than that needed to buy personal health insurance. Why is this? Well, the answer is simple surely. I am not only paying for myself, but also for those others who are unfortunate enough not to be able to pay for themselves. How many of those people are there I wonder... Well there are approximately 1.5m people unemployed in the UK, so for arguements sake, let us say that those are these people, after all, children can be covered by their parents insurnace and the elderly should have savings with which to pay these costs. So that's 1.5m out of 60m people (59.6) or more correctly, 4.7% of economically active people. So that means that for every 21 economically active (working) people there is about one unemployed person. So the burden for those unable to pay medical insurance for themselves falls across 21 people. From a range of insurnace quotes online the average cost works out at £97.07 per month for fully comprehensive insurance with no excess covering the individual and up to 3 children as well, that works out at £4.62 for each of those 21 people in work.
The average pay (only data I could find) was £24,603 or £465 weekly. The national insurance contributions for this wage account for £41.14 a week in national insurance contributions, or £164.56 per month. That's £67.49 surplus above the individual requirement for insurance, that means that for every 21 people in work (using averages) 14 other people can be supported, at the current level of employment. Does this mean that savings are possible if we only taxed for those who are unable to pay for themselves?
Clearly this is a back of the envelope calculation, and the issue isn't quite so simple. The principle still holds though, taxation does not invite efficiency. Why create a cost efficient service if the revenue is guaranteed? A mostly private system would have a direct incentive to improve efficiency, that would surely benefit us all.
posted by Dan at 8:09 PM
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