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sleazy -> RE: Should healthcare be a right or a privilege? (3/2/2007 6:50:35 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: meatcleaver
The NHS is twice as efficient as the US system and more efficient than any other European system. The Brits have their healthcare on the cheap. If you want perfection you have to pay for it, the Brits aren't prepared to pay but they have a damn good service for the price they are willing to pay. While I accept that the bigger % of the money that goes to the coal face the better, Briatain pays less on administrators than other countries.
How are you measuring efficiency? Forget any governement targets, they are either massged (1) or irrelevant to the real world (2) Perhaps you would like to add in othe variables such as MRSA infection rates too as a true measure.
(1) Waiting list for routine surgery eg hip replacement.
a) After an intitial consultation following the making of the original appointment bump the surgery, patient is no longer classed as on waiting list having had an appointment scheduled and seen the consultant.
b) Send patient to a foriegn country such as Germany where the operation is done quicker, cheaper and with less chance of residual infection
c) Offer to meet part of patients cost to travel abroad for private surgery
(2) In the city of London there is an 8 min response target for Cat A calls, eg heart attack. Ambulance on scene in 7m59s patient dies = sucess, on scene in 8:01 and patient survives = failure.
Administrators, many administrators in UK hospital are clinically trained and have clinical job titles and descriptions, eg charge nurse.
As you are so fond of demanding of me, provide sources, I however do not care if the sources are from a leftwing broadsheet or a piece of toilet paper as long as they have some resemblance to the real world
quote:
ORIGINAL: farglebargle
And just to put a finer point on the issue.
New York: Family of 4: $ 1,100.00/month ( $ 13,200/annum )
quote:
ORIGINAL: meatcleaver
The average Brit pays 11%, though there are all sorts of allowances and not all that goes to healthcare but to state pensions etc. So someone earning 1000 pounds a month, $1946, they will pay 110 pounds a month, $214, regardless of how many people are in the family, whether 1 or 81 but then there are tax allowances depending on the size of your family so the figures are a little morte involved. But Brits pay far less than their continental counterparts so I don't think Brits have much room to complaijn, they get a good deal considering and if they aren't happy, they should be prepared to pay more.
family of four in the UK, £7200 per annum, that is far more than many families ever pay in taxes, especially as many families actually get more back in tax than they pay, therefore the money comes from elsewhere, such as buying fuel for the car, paying your electricty bill, having a meal out at Mcdonalds. The NHS is NOT free, its just paid for before you recieve a paycheck. If a doctor prescribes me a basic painkiller, it costs me 25p to buy a generic over the counter brand, or I can pay the NHS (paid for already by my taxes) fee of £6.65 for exactly the same drug, from exactly the same manufacturer in a bottle that says NHS rather than Walmart.
Income Tax is not supposed to pay for the health service, there was a whole new "tax" developed back in the 40s to pay for the NHS and the welfare state, both of which have far outgrown their original remit and developed into self perpetuating beauracracies. (as a point of interest, many benefit fraud offices cost more to run than they recover) If you actually look at the number the average brit works longer hours, gets less paid holidays, pays more in taxes (direct & indirect) and it would seem you agree with the last part of this from your posts Meat, has a far worse overall quality of life than your average european citizen.
For a single male under 75 2006-2007, the first £5035 is tax free, the next £2090 is taxed at 10% after that and up to £32400 is taxed at 22% and beyond that at 40%. There is then the National Insurance contribution (the deduction that supposedly covers all the welfare state activities, which is where your 11% comes from I suspect, that 11% is paid on all earnings between £4368 and £33540, after which the deduction is 1%, employers too are liable for National Insurance contributions on a similar sliding scale of upto 12.8% If my employer could not pay NI, and only pay into private healthcare and pension funds, it would add a whole 3% to the salary bill for the company! Of course it would also have gained the company as I for one would not have had a single sick day in the last 5 years and bearing in mind the hazourdous occupations of many staff the same would apply to lots more.
So at 11% and £1800 pa/ph the average salary of every man woman and child the uk would have to be £12877 to pay for the health service using the payroll deduction that nominally covers the welfare state. The number of people in work for the last quarter of 2006 ws 29.04 million, roughly half the entire population, so that brings the average wage upto £25754 to cover that bill, however the average wage nationally was £23244 (shortfall of £2510) and that does not cover the other things that supposedly are paid for by that 11% for the welfare state such as employment, sickness and disability benefits and the state pension. See now where the figures just dont add up?
We do NOT pay 11% for our healthcare, never mind the rest of the welfare state pen pushers.
Sources
£1800 per head per annum for healthcare - Times story previously quoted and linked
Working populations and incomes - Office of National Statisitics http://www.statistics.gov.uk
Tax & NI rates and allowances - Inland Revenue http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/
Cost of private pension/healthcare for staff - Company accountant.
EDIT -
Please do NOT draw comparisons using the £/$ exchange rate Meat, it is not valid at all, to be valid the minimum wage in the US today would have to be in the region of $10.40 an hour and the average US salary $50k. To put it simply the McDonalds dollar menu translates as the pound menu. To all intents and purposes the dollar and the pound are at near enough parity for most cost of living/income comparisons.
Using your $/£ comparisons would result in the 1100 a month bill of Fargle actually working out nearer £550 for a family of four ie £6600pa which I am sure you will agree is less than the £7200 it actually costs!
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