Having a free health service is not a necessity to the UK

Having a free health service is not a necessity to the UK but is taken as granted which should no longer be the case. Our health service is constantly being taken advantage of and is ill financed so we must do something about it. We should be adopting the same principle used when a luxury is mistreated, it is removed. If we implement charges at the access points of our NHS service then we can deter time wasting and better finance the service. Critical conditions will be exempt from the charge although those who do not need immediate attention will not as this may prevent those who need the attention from receiving the care which they are entitled to.In our general practices we should not be supplying medication which is available in stores. In many tesco stores paracetamol can be acquired for as little as £0.35 for 16 Mg tablets but this costs the NHS a whopping £3.23 for each individual prescription. This is up to as much as ten times the supermarket price which means that the expense can mount up quickly. A news article published in the Scottish Herald, detailed how free paracetamol prescriptions amounted to a total over £57 million since the year 2011. By stopping the supply of free prescriptions then we would be able to cover the costs of Scotland’s prescription epidemic. Although the government’s public spending budget was reduced from an expected £817.5 Billion to £800.4 Billion, a rough amount of 19% still went to the health sector which is around £151.9 Billion pounds. However if we were to charge for prescriptions or made the public buy them from stores themselves we could add a figure of around £204,077,860 to the budget which could go to hiring new staff, paying for training so staff are always up to date, and are able to do their job to the best of their ability.If we have the ability to reduce waiting times then we have the ability to help more people who desperately need it. If we, as a country, were to introduce charges to the access points of the NHS such as A&E’s then we should be able to reduce waiting times. In 2018 the number of hospital beds which we have available across the service was slashed by four times the amount we had in 1948 of 480,000 to 120,000. Whereas the number of nurses and doctors we had has dramatically increased from sixty eight thousand up to as much as two-hundred thousand nurses and from eleven thousand, seven hundred doctors to one-hundred and fifteen thousand today. This is an increase of up to 147.56% in the nurses which we have available and well over enough nurses and doctors to tend to each hospital bed so why are the resources which we have still running short? Perhaps the answer lie with the cases which are admitted to our A&E’s. The average window which A&E staff aim to see patients in which is four hours, but only 95% of patients get seen in this time. At the beginning of 2018 the british population was at 63,182,000 which means that there was still an estimate of 3 million, one hundred and fifty nine thousand, one hundred people who are not being seen in the target window. We must do something in order to help these people get seen by hospital staff who can effectively help them sooner. Fours hours is still a long time but this can be reduced. By implementing charges for time wasting in A&E’s then would be be able to achieve seeing all patients who needed to be urgently seen as time wasters would be deterred if they did not need immediate medical attention.Charges may act as a deterrent for those who wish to take advantage of the free British health care. In the last few years the number of non-UK residents who have claimed free health care has been on the increase. As a country the United Kingdom has been a provider of free health care and offers a better service than countries who are still developing in the modern world. This alone makes us liable to being taken advantage of. Free health care means that those from poorer countries can come to the UK already sick and suffering and then be rushed in for immediate treatment in hospitals after falling gravely ill. This must be stopped, treatment must not be denied for these people but we should not offer them the same free service as the residents of the United Kingdom. If we were to continuously supply other countries residents with free health care then we risk not being able to supply those who live in our own country with the same quality of healthcare. We are neglecting our own country for others, when instead we should be stopping the allowance of others using our service in order to make it the very best we can, because you cannot clean up a messy room with people still in it can? Therefore the same principle applies to our country. Our home. We spend on estimate between £110 and a major £280 million a year paying off the free treatment that has been taken advantage of which could put to much better areas of need. Although it is estimated to have cost up to one point eight billion pounds for overall use of the NHS by tourists, as the majority of this cannot be refunded by insurance companies to the NHS. The costs of A&E usage is included in these figures. Expats are also taking advantage of the service as they still receive free treatment. This should be stopped as their first country of residence is no longer the UK therefore they should not receive the same luxuries as full time residents of the UK. They should be using the medics of their, now, residential country instead of coming back to the UK for treatment. Many conditions do not allow for immediate air travel after treatment either so this will limit the numbers of beds available as they may have nowhere else to go which is why we must not allow this any longer.The budget is strained. There has been an 18.9% increase in 63 years since the opening of the NHS. We started off with 11.2% of the public service budget and now we have 30.1% in 2018. Yet we are still scraping for resources. This could be down to the layers of management which are not needed. If we were to do away with unnecessary hierarchical layers then we may be able to finance our hospitals more effectively. If we widen the span of control of managers who have served their time on the hospital floors instead of hiring managers who have no first hand experience dealing with the emergencies and cases which can be seen everyday then we may be able to afford more beds and more floor staff to treat these patients the best possible care we can provide. This may also allow for departments in rural areas to be reopened as by cutting the wages of high up management officials which are unnecessary then we can have the ability to help more people.If we do not go ahead with implementing charges on NHS access points then we risk forcing ourselves towards medical turmoil. Changes are needed or we cannot guarantee the provision of a substantial service for the residents of the UK. We must stop those who wish to take advantage of our service and make it the best we can for those who have patiently waited in order to get better.