Looks like it could soon be 'RIP the NHS'?

How much money is available to replace Trident?
Is that more important than the NHS?
How much money would be avaiable if tax dodgers paid what they should?
Is that less important thqan the NHS?

The money is there. It's the priority that is wrong.

This should be decided by referendum. It's more important than the EU.

The NHS is a busted flush. I speak as someone who worked in it for years. The amount of waste is appalling and some of the non medical staff are paid a ridiculous amount of money for doing a very mediocre job. The whole thing needs radical reform, it is unsustainable in its present form. The system is abused by too many people.

railman When I took my British Citizenship test, one of the study questions was about NI contributions. They aren't for NHS care, they are for pensions etc. See link below.

www.gov.uk/national-insurance/what-national-insurance-is-for

Strange the government forgot to tell the King's Fund.

www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/nhs-in-a-nutshell/how-nhs-funded

NHS funded out of taxation and NI.

I think we have a choice now.
If you believe in the NHS, fight for it.
If you do not, do nothing.

I believe in it, and can see no better alternative for me, my children and grandchildren.
There are lots of things that are less important than the NHS.

Lewlew, You're right that the NHS is funded from general taxation. NI is supposed to be allocated to a defined range of pensions and benefits. However, the way the Treasury works all the money goes into a big 'pot' and the link with how everything is funded is fuzzy. The government receives almost as much in NI contributions as it does in income tax. For years, it's been a government trick to keep down the income tax rates, because they make headlines, while the rate of NI has crept up. People never build up a personal 'pot' with NI and there is almost no link with what people pay over a lifetime and what they receive. I would be happy to have a system similar to Germany, where people pay into central bank-backed insurance schemes for illness, unemployment and pensions, related to means. Although they pay more, they receive more back. It would, of course, mean that people would pay for illness cover throughout their lives, not just when they're working.

@dj Thank you for the link, which confirms what I just wrote. Government accountants would have you believe that NI doesn't fund the NHS, but some NI contributions do go towards the NHS, although it might not appear that way on the balance sheet.

Getting a bit fed up with people who retired from NHS a few years ago criticising managers. Or "bureaucrats" as are last PM used to call them. The NHS arguably needs more management, not less. There are many very able, dedicated and hard working managers who are doing their best to keep services running in the face if increased demand and ever tightening budgets. I think I am right in saying that there are, relatively very few managers in the NHS considering the size of the organisation. It is certainly the case that some consultants (and maybe other professionals as well?) are very resistant to the introduction of changes in the way things are done, which would potentially make hospitals run more efficiently. This "blame the managers" theme has been pushed heavily by Cameron and many others who wish to detract from the fact that the NHS is being starved of cash and dismantled in a very sneaky way. The decision that NHS services in England have to be put out for tender was not in Hunt's main bill, and so was not debated in parliament. It was shoved through as part of the "regulations" at the end of the passage of the bill which is a very underhand way of making a major change with minimal publicity and potential for anyone opposing it. If you remember the main bill was about clinical commissioning by GP consortia.
I think we should stick up for NHS managers who have a very tough job.

Agreed, Jess. My sister was an NHS manager. Over the last few years she had to make her two deputies redundant, which meant she had to do more herself and delegate management responsibilities to more front line staff, which meant that clinical staff, whose main role should have been patient care, had to do more paperwork.

The NHS spends more than £3 billion just on the internal market commissioning services from each other and from private providers. This includes administrators, negotiators, lawyers and accountants - allegedly to save money hmmm..

Thanks for the petition link. Signed.

Thanks, too, to Durhamjen and others for all the background info and links. Invaluable to read GNers who can share their knowledge and expertise in this area.

Meantime, on the topic of health insurance, the OH and I pay around £17 a month (for the two of us) with Benenden. I've just had gall bladder surgery through them as the nhs waiting times are lengthy round our way.

Whilst I know that some GNers will have issues of principle with any paid for treatment, I thought it might be worth a look for the non urgent stuff that comes along.

I've joined all the online groups I can. I've also just posted info about STPs to a local group which is campaigning for better local facilities.

If people want to find out what's already planned in their area, click here...

speakout.38degrees.org.uk/campaigns/nhs-secret-plans

petition.parliament.uk/petitions/124340

I have tried signing the petition but the validation email is not coming through to finish it off - anyone else had this?

No, I received mine within seconds.

I agree JessM about the scapegoating of NHS managers, and the Kings Fund does indeed show that for an organisation the size of the NHS there are too few managers. I have retired from the NHS, not as a manager, and I know how demoralised and stressed most of the staff of all grades now feel.

I can't bear to read all this. The Government's action on the NHS is born out of greed and profiteering, and is based on the philosophy that the poor, the elderly, the sick and the disabled are not worth keeping alive as they cost the rich too much so we can all go to hell in a handcart as far as they're concerned. All you need to do is to look at which MPs have a financial interest in private health care and health insurance and you have your answer. I despise them for what they are doing.

Having spent the last 15 weeks in our local district hospital with a very sick husband. In my humble opinion the NHS is already on its knees. The nursing staff and carers are worked way, way too hard and for a very measly salary compared to some other professions

I worked in the NHS from 1967 to 2004 nursing and my wife worked from 1965 to 2011 as a midwife. Over those years the Conserative governments have always done their utmost to run the service Into the ground. Frank Dobson was the health secretary from 1997 to 1999 and by far the best health secretary that the NHS had. All others have been less than useless. Over the years as more and more overseas visitors came to the UK the more the service started to creak under the strain of sheer numbers of patients and constant hidden budget cuts. The current health secretary is fragmenting the service to make it easy to sell off each section to the private sector.

fullfact.org/europe/eu-immigration-and-pressure-nhs/

fullfact.org/immigration/immigration-and-nhs-staff/

fullfact.org/immigration/some-immigration-facts-factchecked/

You should be careful what you say about immigrants and the NHS.
If all the immigrants went home, we'd be stuck.

The rest I agree with. My mother was a nurse from 1939 to 1982.

Headline in Observer -Tory wants a dedicated? Tax for the NHS. I haven't read the article yet but if he has the survival of a NHS at the centre of his ideas, then I will support him. I don't care where the support comes from as long as we keep our health service free and comprehensive at the point of need.

Most new immigrants are young and healthy, and make few demands on NHS. Same goes for all the Australian and New Zealanders who come to work in London for a few years.
There is a higher demand for maternity related services amongst more settled groups of immigrants as some groups tend to have more children than the average. This has a long term benefit - if it was not for this group we would have an even worse ever-aging population profile and even fewer younger people to work and pay taxes over the coming decades.

nhap.org/dr-paul-hobday-leader-of-the-national-health-action-party-says-that-we-need-action-now-to-save-the-nhs-what-will-be-left-to-renationalise-in-a-couple-of-years-time-wont-be/

www.theguardian.com/society/2016/aug/27/uk-needs-new-tax-to-save-nhs-social-care-from-collapse

This is it, whitewave.

I do not know how a doctor can be a Tory MP and agree with what their own party is doing to the NHS.
He must know there is enough money collected in taxes and NI. He has obviously agreed for it to be spent in different ways. He cannot solve the problem when he is part of it.
He has agreed to reduce the number of tax collectors so that taxes are not collected to the full. He has agreed with the government on spending money on Trident instead of the NHS.

Thanks durhamjen and daphnedill... very strange for an official govt site to put in such wrong info, and to what purpose? If the funding has shifted and the pots mixed over time, then what is the point. I wonder what they teach in schools... if at all...about how government works.

Lewlew, schools teach almost nothing about how the government works. You probably know a lot more than the average British person born in the UK.

I don't know why the pots have become mixed, but I'm sure tha accountants do.

My personal belief is that National Insurance needs reforming, because it's not doing the job nowadays that it was set up to do. It has been heavily criticised for being a regressive tax, because the wealthiest don't pay proportionately more and because the link between what people pay in and what they get out is almost non-existent.

However, it could be changed so that there was no limit to the amount that the wealthy pay.

The point is that it is National INSURANCE.
I cannot recall ever being able to get out as much as I paid in in any insurance schemme I've paid into.
The idea of insurance is that you pay in just in case something bad happens. That should be what the NHS cover is all about, except that people who cannot afford to pay in should also be covered.