Originally Posted by
Skipname
People are complaining about the public services because they feel (or at least I do) that they are paying too much for the services they receive. Before Obama had his way with the health insurance I lived in USA for a while and I was paying 99$ a month for health insurance. While I was there I had the misfortune to require medical assistance, I received a 5 star service and I was very impressed with the whole thing. Now move forward few years and I am paying for the national insurance in UK a lot more than that for a service that is average at best. Where is the value for money?
Every month the government takes about 1/3 of my pay cheque before it even reaches my account. Add the council tax, VAT on everything I purchase plus various other taxes and well over half my money goes to the government in taxes each month. How is that justifiable and why would people want to pay even more is beyond me.
National Insurance predates the NHS by a few decades, and isn't primarily to fund the NHS.
As for value for money, then, in terms of cost per head of population the NHS isn't bad. I posted this link a while ago when the subject of the relative cost of health care in various countries came up in another discussion:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ure_per_capita
TL;DR : Doesn't look to me as if the NHS is really that bad, it seems to be around average, at the 17th most expensive health care system in that list, and less than half the cost of health care in the USA, and even slightly less costly than health care in France.