But that's beside the point, if you want to take a different view on it, a healthy population is a resource on which these companies draw. In the US model, companies also pay for this, direct to their employees private health insurers. But pay it they (mostly) do.
Healthy population is not only a factor of your government handling the diapers to your hand, and paying back for old people to go to a hot springs vacation. There's a HUGE amount of private responsibility in your health. And you'll find it very strange, maybe, that countries with large welfare systems like France have an extraordinary amount of "sick" people.
Well it's obvious why: once you make welfare (almost) free, people abuse of it because they do not see the cost and they have nothing to report to no one.
You have a very odd view of welfare in the UK and the standard of living.
The standard UK pension is £107.45 per week for a single person, £171.85 for a couple. If you think that's allowing people to live the high life then you and I have a very different view of what the high life is.
£9,000 a year (and this after a 40-odd year working life paying tax) for a couple to cover all living costs doesn't stretch to much in the way of hot springs vacations once you've paid for food, heating and so on.
Benefits are a safety net, they're not some route to easy luxury. Living on benefits is hard and not a whole bunch of fun. Yes there are some people who abuse them (though fewer than many would think) but that's the price we pay for having that safety net there. To get rid of them would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Unfortunately there is a large group of people that do abuse the system.
A family member of mine is the head for a large region of Scotland for the Department of Work and Pensions.
They say that it is terrible what goes on. The average pensioner scrapes by and often do not take all that they are entitled to despite paying into the system for decades as you said.
On the other side is a huge amount of people claiming incredible amounts and have never worked in their life.
The people that do work hard and hit a rough patch are consistently those that claim the least, often waiting a lot longer than they need to before claiming anything.
There's abusing the system and there's using the system as it's intended.
Estimates put abuse (fraud, payment through mistakes) at 2%. Yes that's a lot of money, but that's not going to turn the country's fortunes around if it were eliminated. Realistically there is likely to be a minimum realistic level of fraud which balances the cost of catching offenders against the cost of the offence, and the side effects in excluding those who are actually valid claimants.
Those using the system as it's intended (that is being genuinely out of work, unwell or whatever) are a bit trickier. There are bits of Scotland that have terrifying problems. I live in Glasgow and the east end has areas where there are three generations of families who've never worked.
That's obviously a major problem but there are a few things it's worth thinking about:
1) Long term unemployed - that is longer than 12 months - is less than 30% of the overall unemployment figures. That's obviously pretty high (though not surprising, it's harder to get a job when you've been out of work for a while so it's self reenforcing) but many of those will be people who genuinely want a job. The people I mention who've never worked and will never work are a tiny fraction of that.
2) Contrary to popular belief, these people are not living any kind of luxurious existence. People point to satellite TV without realising that most of those decoder cards are pirated and designer clothes without understanding that for the most part they're fake.
3) How you deal with it is complex - pulling benefits from these people is more likely to drive them to crime than to work.
4) How do you make sure you get people who are genuinely on the take without removing the safety net from those who need and want it?
So I'd argue (a) it's a smaller problem than many suggest and that (b) the solutions are a little more complex than the swift kick up the arse that some feel will sort things out.
>There's a HUGE amount of private responsibility in your health. And you'll find it very strange, maybe, that countries with large welfare systems like France have an extraordinary amount of "sick" people.
Citation needed. All the evidence I've seen is that the French are much healthier than Americans.
Average life expectancy in France is 81 years, in the US it's 78 years.
On the other hand in 2008 Forbes compiled a list of the 15 healthiest countries based on a range of factors. France were number 15, the US were number 11.
Broadly I think they're probably about the same - essentially healthy Western nations who could do better.
For me the most interesting statistic about nationalised healthcare vs. the US model of private healthcare (other models are available) is the cost:
The US pays more per person on healthcare admin than the UK pays into the NHS in total.
Did you read my sentence? There is HUGE amount of private responsibility in your health. What you eat makes a difference on how you end up aging, it is well proven. For overall health statistics, you can go to the WHO website, but a quick info about depression:
"Based on detailed interviews with over 89,000 people, the results showed that 15% of the population from high-income countries (compared to 11% for low/middle-income countries) were likely to get depression over their lifetime with 5.5% having had depression in the last year. MDE were elevated in high-income countries (28% compared to 20%) and were especially high (over 30%) in France, the Netherlands, and America. "
But that's beside the point, if you want to take a different view on it, a healthy population is a resource on which these companies draw. In the US model, companies also pay for this, direct to their employees private health insurers. But pay it they (mostly) do.