Re dementia and Alzheimers, in the US we see a tremendous growth in facilities to care for those conditions. The one benefit (in the US at least) in relation to many other health issues is that a much greater proportion of those being treated have significant assets/wealth as a function of their advanced age. This I’m sure provides the funding and has motivated the dramatic rise in treatment facilities.
In general the solution to all these problems is a healthy economy. Making money should be the focus of debate, not spending it. Government doesn’t make money.
kwlf wrote:
If you were to send some specific examples (by PM if necessary for confidentiality) I would be interested.
Sent!
Add an extra child or two and you are talking up to 5% of your salary
Indeed, but the cost of the extra kids will be way way more than the child benefit. BTW the child benefit is much less for 2+ but the cost of raising them doesn’t go down – until you get to “economies of scale” 
Plus to cost to society of the extra people using energy, generating CO2, generating waste, etc.
One thing the NHS does do well, is to offer people the treatment they need rather than the treatment they think they need.
That’s true; if you arrive with a broken leg you will get top treatment. However, if you have e.g. angina you might wait 6 months for a cardio consultant appointment (same day for £200 if going private) and then x months for e.g. a stent (same week for £10k if going private). It doesn’t take a PhD to work out that almost everybody can go private for the pre-treatment stuff, at least.
arj1 wrote:
He said that being very expensive contractor he could not justify for himself buying VERY expensive end-user h/w (Laptops, for example) that was routinely purchased in the NHS.
My experience (from a mainly tax-funded organisation) is that it pays to buy the top-end stuff because you can use it for a longer time before needing a replacement. The previous laptop I bought at work was the most expensive Apple MacBook Pro. I used it for 7 years.
Peter wrote:
No normal country can afford instant and complete attention for everybody. Saudi Arabia probably can.
I happen to have had direct experience of the KSA healthcare system. It is pretty much the same as the US system, in that you walk in and the first thing they want is your credit card and insurance details, regardless of if you are looking for a general checkup, outpatient care, or are literally dying….in front of the admin desk… which is the first place you are sent.
Once you are past that hurdle the care is excellent. Like the US (which, FTAOD, Ive also experienced).
Regards, SD..
That sounds just like the UK system I have always used, once past the GP
Peter wrote:
And there is a huge amount of fraud in this whole area which would need to be tackled more rigorously (more expensively).
I’m not so sure. In the previous decade there was a perception of major fraud in the Swedish social security system which lead to some serious tightening-up with considerable collateral damage in the sense that many people who were entitled to benefits were given a hard time by ever-increasing demands of proof and in many cases were left out altogether.
The thing was that no one had actually done a proper study of social security fraud and when it was finally done it turned out that although the amount of money lost through fraud was large in absolute numbers (since Sweden has a comprehensive social security system), it only amounted to a few percent of the total budget.
Off_Field wrote:
Arguably, Singapore, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia, Quatar, Monaco, Luxemburg, are all low tax states with pretty decent standards of living for its citizens.
Funny you mention Saudia Arabia and Qatar. These are in practise slave states and they also have very large oil incomes. Not difficult to have low taxes then.
Off_Field wrote:
This is somewhat tongue in cheek, but sounds very much like the attitude of a certain national socialist from the mid part of last century.
Can you please stop calling people names? It doesn’t help trying to say it is “tounge in cheek”.
Airborne_Again wrote:
My experience (from a mainly tax-funded organisation) is that it pays to buy the top-end stuff because you can use it for a longer time before needing a replacement. The previous laptop I bought at work was the most expensive Apple MacBook Pro. I used it for 7 years.
He meant gaming laptops, like exally expensive intel-based laptops.
