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"On waiting for services: I was actually (and still technically am) on an NHS waitlist which I've been on for the last 5 years, my new employer is just paying a private doctor to handle everything which begins next week"

Presumably you've connected the two. If there is a supply side shortage of doctors - and there is - yet if you have the money you can jump the queue, then all that does is increase the delay to those without money.

It's like the priority queue at Alton Towers, which in itself is an affront to one of the core British values - that we are all the same really and we all stand in line awaiting our turn.

The solution is to abolish the fast track option and reorder the priority queue based upon need, not ability to pay. That is, and remains, the founding value of the NHS.

It's how we get the rich to pay more. They wait the same time as the poor person with the same issue, but their time is more valuable.

Private medicine doesn't increase the capacity of the system. It tilts the system towards those who can afford a FastTrack Pass at the expense of those that can't.

A lot of doctors leave Germany because of bad pay. If private doctors have higher salaries that is an incentive for people to become doctors for other reasons than just passion which is a fickle thing.

I suppose to my mind it depends on who benefits. I'm not averse to people getting private treatment if there are reasonable wait times within the NHS and the NHS gains from that.

Where it gets to the point of NHS dentists where it's a struggle to get one, because they're all private. That is an issue.

Private medicine increases the capacity of the system in other countries (including mine). Making a doctor career not attractive is decreasing the capacity of the system and UK is doing that; there used to be a large number of doctors emigrating my country for UK, that flux is almost zero now. I cannot even mention why this is happening without being downvoted to hell, it is an unpopular fact.

There is a supply side shortage of doctors everywhere.

If doctors migrate to the U.K. that just means the country where they trained has poorer healthcare. And that country has trained somebody for no benefit to itself.

We call that colonial appropriation of other nations natural resources.

The U.K. has to cut its coat to its cloth.

Not really. In the UK nearly all private work by doctors is an extra session on top of full time NHS job. It increases the hours worked, and it increases capacity through a investigations/non health services also requires. Personally, I don’t do any private work but don’t think it’s a bad thing to do so.

If there is capacity it can be transferred to the NHS can’t it. Then the queues would be shorter.

What you’re suggesting there is that the full time NHS job isn’t full time enough.

Sure, but time is a limited resource. The less free time you get, the more you want to charge for loss of that free time as it has become more valuable. At one point that extra session is too expensive for the NHS but not for private companies. Then there is extra capacity in the system. That’s just economics. You could get rid of private care by funding the NHS more than any private company, then doctors wouldn’t want to work for them (excluding all the other reasons people don’t want to work for the NHS).

On other reasons to not work for the NHS: culture plays a big part. The NHS is very bureaucratic and slow to change. Private companies have the potential to offer a more positive work culture, flexible hours, etc etc all the normal things that ‘good’ companies to work at do to help offset lower wages that the NHS often doesn’t. Similarly, due to different funding models, private healthcare can give drugs/perform procedures which don’t have a good cost/benefit analysis but the customer doesn’t mind paying for. That’s just more money into the system and one fewer person in the queue waiting for treatment for everyone else.

An analogy is helicopter vs train. The free train run by the government is full. Rich guy buys a helicopter ticket. Queue for the train is one person shorter. The government would never fund a helicopter journey as too expensive. So its not even a consideration for the government.

You can try push the everything must be NHS or nothing, but we start moving away from a free market economy, and that that’s a whole different argument, and has much bigger impacts than just the NHS.

> Similarly, due to different funding models, private healthcare can give drugs/perform procedures which don’t have a good cost/benefit analysis but the customer doesn’t mind paying for.

Private healthcare causing harm by over-testing, over-diagnosing, and over-treating is not an advantage.

We can completely agree about the dangers of overtesting/diagnosing/testing (which occurs in all health settings), but it’s disingenuous to say that all private health care does. There are plenty of treatments and investigations that are too expensive so NHS doesn’t fund, or wants a trial of a objectively worse but cheaper alternative first to see if works because it’s cheaper and for no other reason. In those cases, they person harmed is the customers wallet, and that is their choice. I’m pro free treatment, but having private healthcare alongside a strong NHS is to my mind a benefit. I would be against private healthcare in situations where they influence the NHS, or NHS trust outsource whole departments to private (which is happening), but private healthcare isn’t always evil.

"An analogy is helicopter vs train."

That again requires additional capital allocated to rich people. The government can easily ban use of helicopters and force them to accept the same price as a train. Which is what you do if you want to avoid rich people jumping the queue.

We're back to the Alton Towers example.

"Private companies have the potential to offer a more positive work culture"

All NHS GPs are private companies. Always have been. So why not become a full time GP on the NHS?

Private medicine uses up scarce resources that can be redployed to the NHS - for the benefit of all.

There is no free market economy in healthcare as I said initially. It is supply side limited by the nature of the work. And when a system is supply side limited the 'free market' just means rich people can jump the queue. Their extra money doesn't fundamentally increase supply.

If I was a politician and I wanted to get rid of the NHS, I would first starve it for resources then use the resulting anger as an excuse to privatize it and sell its assets to some waiting American corporation for pennies on the dollar. I would expect that's what is about to happen.

That appears to be the Tory strategy in general. They are ideologically opposed to the state providing anything. Except lucrative contracts for their mates, of course.

The Coulston Four outcome wasn't the result of jury nullification, the defendants were acquitted because they had a lawful defence.

I suppose it's possible that the jury found that they found the defendants guilty of breaking the law but returned a "perverse verdict" anyway (jury deliberations are secret after all), but their behaviour certainly had the possibility of being lawful and the jury were directed to decide whether or not it was lawful.

Maybe, I guess we'll never know as their deliberations are secret but I can see what you mean.

A better example would have been for me to use the case of Extinction Rebellion and Shell: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/23/jury-acq...

> On waiting for services: I was actually (and still technically am) on an NHS waitlist which I've been on for the last 5 years, my new employer is just paying a private doctor to handle everything which begins next week.

Don't you pay something like 60% taxes for this?

> of immigration raids being stopped by hundreds of people surrounding the vans until the police leave

I suppose illegal migrants are ineligible for public healthcare. Else it's a little counter productive for people to block immigration enforcement isn't it?

> Don't you pay something like 60% taxes for this?

Yep, my effective tax rate is roughly 55% over the year

I've previously applied to go work in the US, particularly at Stripe. Basically got told unless I have something ridiculous (so they can get me an EB-1A) the waiting times for Visas is way too long.

Are you sure your tax rate is 55%? You’d have to be earning £500k+ and paying off a Plan 4 student loan for that to be the case.

Part higher, part additional rate + 9% student loan repayment + national insurance contributions

I'm nuking the student loan as fast as possible, especially with the interest rates being near extortion, so hopefully that will mean I get more take home in the future

Ah so you’re choosing to repay a loan faster and calling that tax. Be honest please

I'm not counting my voluntary repayments in that figure.

45% Income Tax + 9% Student Loan Repayment (mandatory) + 3.25% National Insurance Contributions

Gives 57.25%, but this is off because:

- Student loan repayments start somewhere above 20k, which decreases it

- National insurance runs at 10.25% before going down above a certain income, which increases it

- Higher rate and basic rate apply to some income (but no tax free allowance), which decreases it

Hence to a round(ish) number roughly 55%

Honestly I think these kinds of calculations should also include all the VAT you pay out over the course of a year, which I imagine is also reasonably substantial.

Also, you're not paying 45% income tax on the total amount right (that's the highest bracket in the UK).

This is highly misleading. The 45% rate only applies to the portion of salary over £150k. Someone earning £200k will pay 75k in income tax. That’s 37.5% overall.

Impressive you can earn >200k and yet be unable to do basic maths.

You haven’t included VAT in your effective tax rate.

As sibling comment said, you are NOT paying 55% tax unless you're well above the £300k mark. Do not use hyperbole for sake of argument.

I'm in the higher tax bracket and still I'm far away from that percentage. I see that >50% tax rate in Italy, which is the leading cause of tax evasion, with some actually moving their companies to the UK to pay less tax.

> Basically got told unless I have something ridiculous (so they can get me an EB-1A) the waiting times for Visas is way too long.

Just get an O-1.

Wait time for the UK shouldn't be that long anyways.

> I suppose illegal migrants are ineligible for public healthcare

They're eligible in the US.

> Else it's a little counter productive for people to block immigration enforcement isn't it?

Public healthcare is rarely someone's only interest.

> Don't you pay something like 60% taxes for this?

Noone pays 60% tax, the UK taxation is at a similar level to the US for most people, they will pay between a 20% and 30% effective rate although there are progressive bands.

The higher rate is 40% and that's before National Insurance Contributions, Student Loan Repayments through HMRC, Personal Allowance removal, etc

To be fair folks in the US also have to pay for college, but to give an example of the typical situation in the UK: £55,000 loan on a 7.3% interest rate (it was going to be 12% but the government decided to reduce it https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-61765891) in a country where the average income is £31,722 per year

It really depends when you went to uni. My sister had free tuition and a grant. I had a small tuition fee and student loans (totally 9k at below inflation interest rate, now paid off). New students are unfortunately likely to face the kind of debt and terms you describe.

It’s a very sad situation. The conservative government have been running Britain into the ground since they took power after 10 years of very good governance by labour (reduced NHS waiting times, good economic growth, ability to deliver infrastructure projects in time and on budget, reduced crime, reduced child poverty, etc etc.) that was soured by the financial crisis. Then the conservatives grabbed power and shoved the country into reverse, doubling the national debt in the first four years through “austerity” policies designed to reduce spending that instead caused a double dip recession and negated any savings through reduced tax receipts. Then poverty and crime rose while the economy tanked and the social safety net and police and health services were gutted (my local area lost 1/4 of its police officers, for example). And all of that had to be blamed on Eastern European immigrants and Europe so we had Brexit.

David Cameron has to go down as the worst prime minister in the history of Britain. He’s been a complete disaster on every front. The current clown is just a sick result of Cameron’s incompetence.

As a 2019 graduate I just feel lucky that I'm fortunate enough to be able to pay the whole thing off rather quickly. The same can't be said for everyone else in my cohort.

Honestly I don't think they'll ever write Plan 2 loans off, these people will spend their entire life paying their 9% loan repayments, with no hope to ever pay off the total sums as they climb by 5% a year.

Cameron was so terrible the British people keeps voting in his entourage. Imagine seeing May and Johnson as the saviour of the country. This is the same people that stopped voting Lib Dem because they lied, that time. How daft is that.

The voting majority is completely irrational, however one tries to rationalise their behaviour (it was a protest vote!)

I expect Tories to be voted in again next election.

You will pay 60% tax if you earn salary between £100,000 and £125,000. It’s not a myth and has been around for years.

Then add VAT at 20%, fuel duty (approximately 50% tax on the cost of fuel and the duty also has VAT added to it, so you’re taxed on the tax), vehicle excise duty, student loan repayments, council tax, National Insurance (which has just gone up by 25% as well) to that.

https://www.buzzacott.co.uk/insights/exposing-the-60-income-...

If you make £125,000 a year living in United Kingdom, you will be taxed £48,323. That means that your net pay will be £76,677 per year

48,323/125,000 != 60%

It's the marginal rate, not the overall rate.

Further, the 120,000th pound is taxed at 40%. The effective marginal rate of 60% comes from losing the 0% rate benefits for low earners on the 10,000th pound you earnt.

The same thing also happens at 50,000 where you lose your child benefit government handouts, but funnily enough its less discussed yet the comparable rate is 65%.

Now it’s 50K£, because the government increased NI. So you pay roughly 40%, which is quite a lot considering that if you want access to decent healthcare you have to pay privately. Also nurseries cost 2K£ per month and public education is extremely bad.

40 is approximately 20 numbers (all the fingers and toes) smaller than the number 60.

The education systems really is bad that I have to point this out.

60% _marginal_ tax, not everall.