sherbert wrote on Feb 15
th, 2010 at 1:08pm:
Perhaps the only people who do get it totally free are those who enter the United Kingdom and use our facilities without ever having paid any contributions.
As those who have not (previously) paid taxes would have to pay the premium associated with calling a revenue sharing telephone number, is this an argument that use of revenue sharing telephone numbers to subsidise the cost of providing NHS treatment represents a fairer way of paying for if?
Should high earners, who pay more tax, those who have retired from employment, having paid NI throughout their working life and those who travel to hospital by car, and therefore take advantage of car parking facilities, get proportionately more NHS treatment than the poor, the young, life-long carers who are exempt from NI contributions and those who travel to hospital by public transport or ambulance?
We note that Great Ormond Street Hospital, which treats those who pay little or no tax, seeks to remove itself from the NHS by spending money on TV advertising to attract donations. (In fact it gets around NHS regulations by operating through a parallel organisation called the GOSH Children's Charity.)
How, after accepting the glaringly obvious point that nothing is absolutely free of any cost, can I fail to continually disagree with this nonsense?