A comment made here
The Beverage report and resulting welfare state were all set up on the model that 5 yrs after retirement you would be dead. Things you may have notice have changed. When I was at school in the 70s I was taught that men die at 69, now its pretty much 79, and there is no reason to not believe that in another 40 odd years with medical technology it wont be too far short of 89.
So we have now people looking for 20 plus years of retirement income plus increasing medical bills. So where do we get the bill payers, the earners? You might also have noticed that we are having less kids later (the workers of tomorrow) thru a rising costbase (taxes/regulation) young people are forced into their 30s before starting a family, by which time many will have given up hope. Immigration is one way around this but that also comes with a cost, we will have to build a new Birmingham every 5 years for the next 50 years at least.
Then of course we have this 1.4 trillion legacy debt around our shoulders brought from the false boom of the last decade which is a drag on growth and that does not include PFi. Yes John Major came up with the idea but did very few deals as they thought rightly that it was inappropriate in most cases, Gordon Brown and New Labour thought differently and the stats on PFi from 1997 speak for themselves.
So yes the old model of Bevens NHS is dying in front of our eyes, it has been since at least 1976 when the IMF bailed us out, but if if its the current Model what you want it was not Dave and Co who killed it. They are the ones trying to salvage a concept of a public health system which if not reformed urgently will go the same way as big banks, bankrupt.
And strangely enough the analogy is a good one. its not really a left/right issue its like the banks a size issue. The NHS is way too big, I suspect in the future hospitals will be only for the seriously ill, most minor operations will be done in community surgeries. One thing I am sure off is universal health provision through the state is finished. I suspect both opposite inefficient models that are Our NHS and the United States hotchpotch system will morph into something like the German health system, which is the oldest public health system in the world from the 1860s.
You will purchase a insurance product and if you cant afford one the state will purchase one for you. The state will act as universal insurer. You will need to work and get yourself a good policy which of course the babyboomers who stole from their children will not be able to do.
Maybe if they stuck to saving and spending instead of just borrowing their kids would not be at the loan sharks doors?
