Ribeiro calls for more health insurance
The new president of the Royal College of Surgeons, Berine Ribeiro, has said that the National Health Service as it is presently constituted, providing free service at the point of use, is unsustainable and that patients should have to pay for part of their health care.
This would be done by having them take out insurance to pay their portion, similar to how the health care system works in Germany and France.
But the UK’s largest health union, Unison, said that the British public was proud of the way the NHS is presently structured and would object to any changes. The system advocated by Mr. Ribeiro would have a means test that would have the poorest people still paying nothing for their health care.
But he maintains that the working population is capable of making a contribution to their own health care that is not hidden in national insurance and taxes. He also said that while emergency service should probably be covered by the state, not all elective care should be state supported.
The government position, as outlined by Chancellor Gordon Brown in 2002, is that the current tax-supported NHS was “the modern rational choice.â€
The NHS confederation, representing health service mangers, said that if health care paid for by taxes could not be sustained, neither could it be sustained by social insurance.
Shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley said that a tax-funded NHS need not be abandoned, but that reform was essential, while Julia Goldsworthy, the health spokeswoman for the Liberal Democrats, said that while new methods of funding the NHS should be explored, the ideal of healthcare on the basis of need, independent of the ability to pay, was important.
Category: Health Insurance News, Home Insurance News
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