8 Our national health

So, what exactly should our taxes cover? A whole lot more than I can come up with I suspect, but there are some obvious ones; as well as some I feel we should NOT have to pay.

Let’s start with health since I’m proposing to highjack the National Insurance system!

Very broadly … vaccinations against certain diseases and facilities for dealing with epidemics, for example, are essential. Hip replacements and diabetic treatments keep individuals active and contributing – this sort of thing keeps society running. However, services like fertility treatment benefit only the individuals concerned, not society. There are also the knock-on effects of non-essential services. For example, the chances of the children born through fertility treatment needing more healthcare than the average child are higher, possibly even taking either or both parents out of the job pool to care for them. Certainly, at this time, society can’t afford this.

It’s harsh, no doubt about it but remember – a fair taxation system combined with sensible public expenditure should leave us with sufficient in our pockets to pay for what is most important in our lives. If what is important is having children then we can use the money in our pockets to pay for treatment privately.

Now look at the name, The NATIONAL Health Service, not the Local Health Service. Everyone pays into it and should have the same opportunity to use its services. The sufferer of a particular disease in the North West should expect the same service as a sufferer of the same disease in the South East. Allocating budgets here seems daft. Consider; perhaps each area is allocated a certain amount of money per resident to cover prosthetics. However, there are more chances of accidents requiring prosthetics in manufacturing towns than there are in the City of Westminster, say. Each area has different risks associated with it, if something needs doing, it should be done.

Budgets create demarcation lines, borders. Someone could live 5 miles from a hospital but it’s 2 miles over the area health authority border so they have to travel 20 miles in the opposite direction for treatment. Daft!

Our hospitals and health centres have become larger and larger over the years. We don’t need duplicate facilities every fifty miles or so for rare or specialist treatments but we do need local facilities for more general needs, simple broken bones, diagnostic procedures and so on, then send patients diagnosed as needing treatment to a specialist facility. Afterwards patients could be transported back to a local hospital to recover near family and friends. Or perhaps bring back the convalescent homes that used to provide interim care before patients returned to their lives. Also, larger facilities mean more people at risk if there’s an outbreak of something contagious. During times of plague in history, were not people discouraged from large congregations to try and prevent spread of the disease?

There’s more to this subject alone than I can cover in a small blog…but it’s a start.