Half of the public believe that in ten years time they will have to pay towards some NHS services, a new survey found.
The BMA commissioned researchers, Hamilton Lock, to survey over 1000 members of the public about the effectiveness of changes to the NHS over the past decade and to seek their views on commercial companies providing healthcare to NHS patients and on future funding of the NHS.
Some 50% of those interviewed said that in 10 years time they expect to make a contribution toward NHS services they may need as a patient and yet nine in ten respondents (93%) said the NHS should continue to be funded from UK taxes and remain free at the point of use.
Just over half (51%) of respondents opposed the government’s policy encouraging commercial companies to provide NHS healthcare to patients. And almost two in three (58%) disagreed with commercial companies making a profit (for shareholders) from providing NHS care.
Two in five (42%) said that changes to the NHS in the past ten years have succeeded in making the NHS better for patients, while just over a third (36%) disagreed.
Dr Hamish Meldrum, Chairman of BMA Council says: “Although the public strongly supports the principles of the NHS and wishes to preserve it as a tax-funded system, they are clearly worried about the future funding of the health service and the government’s direction of travel on health policy. It is possible that the English government’s increasing use of the commercial sector in providing NHS services is fuelling patients’ concerns that the NHS will begin to charge for some care in the future.
“The public may also fear that with rising drug and treatment costs, advances in medical technology and increasing demand for services, the NHS will no longer be able to afford a completely comprehensive health service. The BMA has long argued for the need for a fully-informed public, professional and political debate about what the NHS can provide, given that there will always be finite financial resources and the need for this debate is long overdue. It would be a travesty if, by default, charges were introduced, destroying the ethos of a universal and equitable health care system that is valued by patients and admired across the world.
“The government should initiate that debate and also take steps to reassure the public that it intends to maintain a tax-funded NHS, not just for the next 10 years, but for the foreseeable future.”