"Paying Twice"
Those who can afford it sometimes opt for private healthcare, usually to get treated more quickly in private facilities (i.e. facilities not provided by, or using, NHS staff or services). When this occurs, these patients are opting to pay twice for their health care, once for the NHS through taxes, and again for the private care they are using. Critics argue that these people do use NHS services, such as their General Practitioner, screening, and vaccination services, and that their opting out from time-to-time is effectively queue jumping because they are utilising a resource ahead of someone in greater need and that their double payment is the penalty for queue jumping. It is argued that it is a civic responsibility for every citizen capable of paying legally applicable levels of tax, to do so, regardless of service use. Therefore, the public services can be subsidised for those who wish to use them - economically, the more people who pay taxes, the less cost to each individual concerned.
Read more about this topic: Criticism Of The National Health Service
Famous quotes containing the word paying:
“Look, we’re all the same; a man is a fourteen-room house—in the bedroom he’s asleep with his intelligent wife, in the living-room he’s rolling around with some bareass girl, in the library he’s paying his taxes, in the yard he’s raising tomatoes, and in the cellar he’s making a bomb to blow it all up.”
—Arthur Miller (b. 1915)
“There is all of the difference in the world between paying and being paid.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)