The NHS needs a reliable source of income. Here’s where to find it | Norman Warner and John Oldham

From properly taxing tech giants to levies on property owned by overseas firms – there are ways to fund our health service

Our NHS is nearly 70 years old. Like many older people it has developed some chronic conditions. It hasn’t changed its model for delivering services sufficiently since Nye Bevan’s day to meet the massive changes in demography, complex disease profiles and the expectations of those it serves.

But even if it became much more efficient and worked more effectively with its sister service, adult social care, this would not resolve a fundamental problem. This is that in today’s world a tax-funded, pooled-risk healthcare system such as the NHS that is free at the point of clinical need requires a more generous funding system than we currently provide or are contemplating. The inconvenient truth for politicians and public alike is that if, as a country, we want an NHS of the kind we like, we have to agree collectively on a more generous and reliable funding system.

The health and care system needs to work more effectively with patients to co-produce better health and wellbeing

Related: NHS faces year-round crisis over lack of social care, says council chief

Continue reading... March 15, 2018 at 03:28PM