From The Daily Mail
Drunks injured in booze-fuelled brawls should be charged for their NHS treatment, Nick Clegg said today. The Deputy Prime Minister revealed he backed the idea of imposing levies on people who get 'completely blind drunk and gets themselves into a scrap'.
An estimated 2million visits are made to A&E every year for alcohol-related illnesses and injuries. Based on the findings, the researchers estimate alcohol may be involved in up to 640,000 hospital admissions and nearly two million visits to A&E in England and Wales each year. Figures from the NHS Information Centre earlier this month show there were 1,168,000 patients admitted to hospital as a result of alcohol in 2011 – up 11 per cent since 2010...
"For too long, moderate drinkers in this country have been expected to subsidise the bad behaviour of a minority by paying £10 billion a year in duties on the beer, cider, wine and spirits they buy", explained the MP for Sheffield Hallam. "We can double that for VAT on top, meaning that drinkers collectively pay for one-fifth of the cost of all NHS treatment, even though treatment for alcohol-related diseases and injuries only account for a tenth of the total cost of the NHS.
"By recovering the costs directly from this minority of patients, any rationale that there ever was for levying taxes on all alcohol - for moderate and binge-drinkers alike - falls by the wayside. We expect the price of a pint in the pub to fall by up to half as a result of this tax shift, and everybody will be able to afford a decent Chablis from their local Waitrose."
3 comments:
To no one's surprise the current (13:30) as voted by readers top "Worst rated" comments on the DM article are:
It's not public money its money I have paid all my working life towards my medical care. No one ever said there were caveats on my treatment. Once they start introducing things like this they will need to give us the option of opting out of the NHS, taking my NI contributions with me, and finding a provider who will cover all eventualities!
- David2511, Edinburgh, 11/4/2013 12:50
Click to rate Rating 9
But the more you drink, the more tax you hand over to the Treasury anyway. Sober, non smokers who cycle everywhere pay less tax than the rest of us. They're the ones who should be charged more when they get ill to make up for the shortfall.
- Persemillion, London, United Kingdom, 11/4/2013 12:51
Click to rate Rating 6
It's a slippery slope, what next, smokers to repay smoking related treatments, fat people for being ill due to being overweight, how do you distinguish between a fall by a lager lout and a someone who has tripped after they've had two glasses of wine after dinner. It's unworkable.
- Judy, Coventry, United Kingdom, 11/4/2013 12:35
Click to rate Rating 6
Does this mean that fat people should pay together with all others that cause injury/illness to themselves? The NHS either treats everyone or no-one. Of course, this might be the tip of the ice berg as they wind the NHS down and privatise the lot finding many unable to afford private health insurance like many other countries.
- Tibby, Bath, United Kingdom, 11/4/2013 12:37
Click to rate Rating 6
That might buy him some votes until the u-turns begin.
I object strongly to paying for the treatment of people who cause their own problems. Also, there are excellent affordable insurance schemes running health in a number of European countries. What we have now is a vast, bloated bureaucracy (oh do we not love those in the UK, the bigger, the more inefficient, the more Labour adore it), and not a functioning Health Service.
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