Posted on 06/01/2007 11:23:02 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
Senior doctors are to propose that health care should be paid for through a compulsory NHS income tax.
Hospital consultants will next week argue that the present centralised system funded through general taxation is "unsustainable and dysfunctional".
A motion to be debated at a British Medical Association conference will suggest a means-tested system similar to those used in France and Germany.
It would see health care paid for by insurance companies, with contributions paid either by employers or taken directly from wages.
Anyone with earnings below a certain level would have their contributions paid for by the state.
Contributions would vary according to income, meaning high earners would pay more.
The French pay premiums amounting to almost 20 per cent of pre-tax earnings while in Germany the proportion varies according to different providers but averages at around 13 per cent.
This equates to about £10,000 and £6,500 respectively for some one earning £50,000 per year.
The call for reform comes as a growing number of economists are arguing for a fundamental change to the way health care is funded in Britain.
About 200 of the country's leading doctors attending the BMA consultants' conference on Wednesday will debate a motion stating: "This conference believes that a means-tested compulsory form of national insurance be set up to fund the NHS."
David Wrede, a consultant gynaecologist at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton, Somerset and one of the doctors who has proposed the motion, said: "The continued failure and multiple attempts to re-organise the NHS are missing the point.
"The fact that the system is tax-funded and so centralised has led to something which is totally dysfunctional and increasingly unsustainable.
"Such a system will always be inefficient and will never deliver the care people aspire to."
Maurice Slevin, a leading cancer expert and founder of the Doctors for Reform campaign group, said: "The fact is the current system isn't working. The cost has more than doubled in real terms.
"The only thing that has improved is waiting times have reduced but everything else has got worse.
"We've paid for a Bentley and got a clapped out Mini. We have a large nationalised system with no mechanism to provide incentives to do things in a cost-effective, efficient manner."
A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "Record investment and reform is delivering a first class NHS for patients."
To each according to their need, from each according to their ability.
Well, if that's the case then why the need for an NHS tax? I mean, going by that quote the NHS is just doing okee-dokee as is.
Correction: BY OTHER TAXPAYERS!!! The state doesn't earn a paycheck from which to donate taxes.
“The fact that the system is tax-funded and so centralised has led to something which is totally dysfunctional and increasingly unsustainable.
“Such a system will always be inefficient and will never deliver the care people aspire to.”
Maurice Slevin, a leading cancer expert and founder of the Doctors for Reform campaign group, said: “The fact is the current system isn’t working. The cost has more than doubled in real terms.
“The only thing that has improved is waiting times have reduced but everything else has got worse.
“We’ve paid for a Bentley and got a clapped out Mini. We have a large nationalised system with no mechanism to provide incentives to do things in a cost-effective, efficient manner.”
Democrats have a ‘plan’, and this is their model.
Who said that? Was it Lyndon Johnson? No, wait! It was Hillary Clinton. Or, was it Karl Marx?
Lenin, MAO, Mussulini, Hitler, LBJ, FDR, Marx, Hillary. They all paraphrase each other.
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