The Labour government announced a big spending increase for the NHS in the budget, worth more than £22billion.
The Star went out to Sheffield city centre to ask people what they would focus on to fix the NHS with the new boost in funding.
The Star went out to Sheffield city centre to ask people what they would focus on to fix the NHS with the new boost in funding.
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00:00I think, ultimately, if you want to fix the NHS, it just needs much more investment in it.
00:05If you look at how much other countries spend per member of population, we vastly underfund it.
00:15I think the GP system is completely broken, again because it's been underfunded.
00:20The situation with physician's assistants and the fact that you can be paid a hell of a lot more
00:26and being much less qualified than doctors that have gone through years of medical practice and
00:33such. I just think it just needs a lot more money thrown at it and I'm not convinced that any
00:38government's prepared to shoulder the cost that it's going to take to get it where it needs to be.
00:45But I think it would be a cry and shame if they don't act because I think systems like
00:49the American system for their health service is just appalling. You get 600,000 people a year
00:57going bankrupt because of cancer or pregnancy and that's just dreadful.
01:04Just on the funding front then, for you, would you be happy to say pay more tax?
01:09100%. I think anyone that isn't prepared to pay more tax to help fund any of the systems that
01:16we have in place, they're not the sort of people that should be then drawing from it. Because this
01:20is the thing, everyone wants something for nothing and I think we all have to be prepared to pay our
01:26way. So things like where a lot of people are calling for higher taxes on very rich people
01:34and then you've got a lot of the bigger media outlets challenging that and challenging the
01:40narrative around it. I think things like an increase in capital gains tax for instance,
01:46why not? This is money that they've not earned through hard labour, they've just sat back and
01:53they've reaped the rewards of it and I just think that things like that would be sort of used,
02:00they'd be really useful for funding things like the improvements to their NHS that they need.
02:06Thank you. The government did announce I think it was 22, 22 point something billion
02:11of extra funding for the NHS, most of which goes to NHS England. How would you personally fix the
02:19NHS if you were in charge of the health department or the treasury? I'd focus on sort of the A&E side
02:25of things, waiting, you know, the amount of time you spend waiting in a hospital for something
02:30that's quite minor. Fair enough, if somebody else has got something else that's, you know,
02:34needs treatment ASAP, then fair enough, I'll prepare to wait. I mean, you know, the great
02:38thing about this country, the blessing is that we get our healthcare for free, obviously we pay our
02:43taxes, but obviously there needs to be more emphasis on maybe employing more staff or better
02:48training for the staff, make it more appeasing for, you know, people coming through the ranks as it
02:53were, some for university etc. I don't see many people really shouting about that, like, you know,
02:59maybe championing the fact that we need more doctors and we need more nurses, you know,
03:04maybe just give it and push it back onto the education system a little bit and be like,
03:07no, this is why, here's the funding to go do that course, you know. I think it all starts
03:12at education, that's generally what I think.