Originally Posted by
VP959
National Insurance predates the NHS by a few decades, and isn't primarily to fund the NHS.
NI is just another tax on income, it's not hypothecated.
The reason it still exists (it should have been amalgamated into income tax decades ago) is so that governments can promise not to increase "tax" and then when they put up NI they claim that because the tax called "national insurance" doesn't have the word "tax" in its name then they haven't put up "tax".