6 ms·

Yeah but healthcare education and pensions ;) That tax is buying us stuff.

• golergka 11y ago
  Ineffectively and for core vote base, not you. This is an old debate.
  • jahnu 11y ago
    Regardless of what one thinks of the tax it's clear one can't compare salaries after taxation. Fact is I don't spend anything on healthcare. In the US I would need insurance. I don't save for my kids university education because it will be free. In the US I would have to. Comparing pre tax income is more useful, by and large.
    • dogma1138 11y ago
      Insurance in the us is also cheaper in paying 2300 a year for private insurance (AXA) so I won't have to deal with the NHS on every silly issue.
      • phaemon 11y ago
        No it's not. Public healthcare spending in the US is higher, per capita, than spending on the NHS. And how the buggery are you managing to spend £2300 a year on health insurance in the UK? That's crazy expensive. Ok, it's less than people in the US pay, but it's still mad for UK.
        • dogma1138 11y ago
          2300 isn't that expensive BUPA would cost you nearly double also please don't compare the public healthcare spending it has nothing to do with the actual prices you end up paying. The health care expenditure in the US is the biggest in the world but that's including all the prices that insurance companies pay for treatment and services. If the US stops charging 3000$ for an MRI scan it's expenditure will go down drastically (an MRI costs about 300$ in most European countries) but it might not have any affect on what the individual ends up paying.
          • phaemon 11y ago
            I last looked about 6 years ago, right enough, but then £120 a month was the maximum charge I could find, that was with zero excess and get paid money for any nights in an NHS hospital, etc etc. I'm not sure what I'd need to add on to get it up to £200 a month - a free chauffeur for any time spent sick? ;-) I suppose prices could have increased a fair bit since then. Also, I note you're in London. I'm in Scotland, so we actually have a different NHS, and it does generally get rated higher than NHS England. I can compare public healthcare spending as that's the money that comes out of your taxes. Americans are taxed more for their public healthcare than we are in the UK for the NHS. They also pay more for private healthcare than we do in the UK. So your claim that it's more expensive here is simply wrong.
      • njs12345 11y ago
        As a counterpoint to this post, I have free private insurance with work and never bother using it because the NHS works so well for day to day things.
        • dogma1138 11y ago
          NHS is good when you are bleeding and need to go to the emergency room. Preventative medicine and specialist care is horrible under NHS at least in inner London, why would I want to wait 6 weeks to see an orthopedist?
          • tamana 11y ago
            Why does loction matter? Are you prohibited from seeing a doctor outiside of inner London?
    • jstelly 11y ago
      For what it's worth, I'm almost certain that every company in this survey provides health insurance at no additional cost (or maybe a small cost, but probably not) to all of the employees surveyed.
• chatmasta 11y ago
  You could buy it yourself for a lot cheaper than you pay for it in taxes. The taxes you pay are buying healthcare for people who cannot afford it. (EDIT: I'm certainly not saying this is a bad thing.)
  • jtreminio 11y ago
    > The taxes you pay are buying healthcare for people who cannot afford it. Which makes it worth it, imho.
  • raverbashing 11y ago
    Of course, the USA is an example of that Except it isn't, anything you want to do there is ridiculously expensive
    • chatmasta 11y ago
      In the USA, Obamacare has increased the price of healthcare so much that you might effectively pay a penalty for purchasing your own healthcare.
      • maxerickson 11y ago
        Healthcare costs were already high in 2008. Setting aside the issue of how much impact the ACA had, the period following the passage of the ACA saw lower price increases than the period before. Last year prices increased at a higher rate again. I think it's not true that the ACA caused that reduction (the recession is probably a much bigger factor), but it also didn't cause prices to increase faster than they were prior to the ACA.
  • coldtea 11y ago
    >The taxes you pay are buying healthcare for people who cannot afford it. That's great! I wouldn't way to be one of the few people able to afford healthcare in a world full of sick people who can't afford to get well...
  • lolidaisuki 11y ago