The question of who should pay for medical care raises strong, polarising views whenever this topic is discussed. This piece provides my personal opinion on this topic, where I strongly agree medical care should be a free service provided by the government. I will focus on the justifications for this stance at a UK government level.
Within recent years the UK economic forecast has consistently highlighted slow productivity grown reducing the UK’s economic growth. One of a myraid of ways to increase productivity is by reducing the total number of sick days alongside increasing the size of the working population. Government funding for medical care removes a key barrier to health care. In doing so the working population is able to access a health provider as necessary resulting in faster return to work instead of delaying due to cost concerns. Continuous support to help long term sick manage their illnesses, either through consistent treatment options or availability to treatments beyond their financial means, increases the size of the working population. Between these measures you increse UK productivity by reducing sick days while increasing the available workforce.
Secondly, across the UK various equality reports have highlighted historical inequality gaps that only continue to widen every year. The most well known example of this is the north south divide. As a deprived population struggles with the cost of living, especially those with no saving ability, any financial barrier to medical care reduces access starting a sprial of reducing health, increasing health problems and reducing ability to work. Eventually this ensures households are incapable of accessing any form of care significantly decreasing their quality of life. While other areas who are able to maintain access to care avoid this vicious sprial. When viewed across the nation this means deprived households are held back while wealthy households are able to continue resulting is the widening divide in inequality across the UK. This is especially obvious in the north of England who have consistently higher deprivation indexes than the south, but densely population urban centres can also have localised hot spots of high deprivation. Often these are council estates or other areas of historically low income households.
Many would counter that the expense of free health care is too significant for any government to take. Charging for healthcare is the only way to generate the income a government requires to provide free health care. Those who use it propotionally more, also pay propotionally more. Though as I have discussed previously there are significant benefits to the government to provide medical care free at point of access. This additional funding can be covered through various means such as higher tax revenue from increased productivity, reduction in overall lifetime healthcare costs due to an overall healthier population, etc. Alongside this running it at a national level allows the UK government access to massively increased economies of scale which should significantly reduce the costs of treatments, facilities and the like compared to much smaller local scale operations.