In the UK should drunks and drug addicts be made to pay for NHS treatment?

Question

People who smoke already pay a huge tax on their habit.

Should the same be applied to hill wakers and potholers who need to be rescued at huge expense to the UK taxpayers.

Answer 1

Then fit and healthy people who are out of work should do the same

Answer 2

Sounds like a good idea, but how would you enforce it?

Answer 3

People who drink heavily also pay a very large amount of tax on their habit too, & so do people who are into extreme sports, in fact their equipment costs a fortune, & anyone getting into danger whilst participating in this type of sport (which keeps them generally fit & healthy & less likely in the long term to be a burden on the NHS) do not get into danger on purpose. We already live in a nanny state, are you suggesting that people should go out wrapped in bubble wrap? I cross a very busy road every day, if I were to get run over, should I pay my medical bill because I wasn't looking where I was going? As for drug addicts, they participate in an illegal activity which our police service is struggling to keep check of. These people have no regard for society, that's how drugs affect them. Anyone seeking help to come off of drugs should do so with our full support. In the long term, having funds there to help rehabilitate drug users will mean that they will have a chance to become real members of society & less of a burden on our benefit system. There would be no point in trying to make them pay for NHS support, as the majority of alcoholics & drug users are on benefits! Maybe you should think to yourself, how many people are on our benefit system? How many have never contributed to NI? How many are not true British citizens? How many people from  other countries take advantage of our NHS, who shouldn't really be entitled to help from the tax paying British citizens who pay for this service? How many people entering our country do so, then sit idly on benefits & in council accommodation? What can be done about these burdens on our society?

Answer 4

Well then you'd have to work out where to draw the line.  Hill walkers, potholers, what about people who drive cars?  Car accidents cause the most injuries and loss of life than anything else in the UK, far more than potholers or even drug addicts!!  Where do you stop?  

Answer 5

yes

Answer 6

Are you forgetting the huge amount paid in tax each month that goes straight out of people's wages? Be it the wages of hill wakers, drinkers, smokers, drug takers?

In theory I think yes drink and drug addicts should pay for NHS treatment, but in practice I don't think it would work at all. How on earth would you enforce it?

As a country we'd all do better to prevent such problems occuring, rather than just force people pay for their addictions/poor decisions in life. Where do you draw the line between what is self inflicted and what isn't? Your hill walkers example is a bit strange; but what if they had to be rescued from unforeseeable weather setting in? Does that make it their fault for going out in the first place? There are always risks in life, and you cannot just bill people for the consequences and say 'your fault, you pay'!

Should we start billing YOU when you suffer eye problems from spending time on the internet?

I appreciate what you are saying, but it could simply never work.

Answer 7

ye this is a great idea how do we put it into practise?

Answer 8

People who drink pay huge taxes on their habit too.  Perhaps if we legalised all recreational drugs we might earn enough in taxes generated from them to improve the National Health Service and bring it back to its founding sentiments: Free treatment for those who need it.

Answer 9

Maybe not for their first treatment, I believe addiction is an illness like anything else.

I know you are probably talking about junkie scumbags who are on their 3rd methodone programme, or getting their leg amputated because they've got gangrene in it, but we cannot refuse them treatment simply because they chose to take the drug/drink.  Some people are not educated enough in the dangers of alcohol and drugs, and this is where the country is falling down.  If children from rough council estates are brought up to believe that all they can be is an alkie or a junkie then why should they try to be anything different, its all they know.

There would be no incentive to get off drugs or drink if they had to pay for it, so they just wouldn't bother about their health and spend all their money on drink and drugs till they died.  I can't believe we live in a world with such little compassion for those who are not as strong willed as ourselves.  If there was no needle exchange they would go back to using dirty syringes and passing all sorts of diseases on to others.  I can't believe you have came out with something so ludicrous.

Why not make the Colombian drug cartels pay for the treatment, or the millionaire brewery companies since they are the people manufactoring the stuff.........?

Answer 10

Great idea, anyone who arrives at hospital should be billed for their treatment but as a previous answer said, how would it be enforced?

Answer 11

yes the bloody dirty scum bags should.why the h**l us tax payers have to pay for all these people is discusting.but then no doubt theyde mug us.stick all the druggies.illegal immigrants,rapist,peado's amd murderers on an island and bomb the lot of them.the world would be a much nicer place

Answer 12

Is your name Gordon Brown by any chance, as you certainly sound like him. It may of slipped your notice that these people pay tax and national health contributions. These are wasted by a incompetent government who couldn't organise a proverbial p1ssup in a brewery.

Answer 13

Absolutely not.

1) Cigarettes and alcohol are highly taxed (so essentially the contribute more to the NHS than non smokers)

2) Where would you draw the line?

3) You would create an even larger social divide between the rich and  poor.

Answer 14

What a good idea. Then we could charge all the people dying from lung cancer as a result of passive smoking.

Then we could charge all the women who go out at night and get beaten and raped by the monsters that prey on them.

All the car drivers involved in accidents that were not their fault, I mean the list is endless.

Answer 15

what so they can rob people for even more money!!!!!!!!

Answer 16

where would you draw the line?

how do you encourage/enforce people to take responsiiliy for their own actions

car drivers are penalised if they are involvd in an accident and taken to hospital. .their insurace company gets a bill whether the driver was liable or not.

should you demand that say victims of doemstic violence should pay for their treatment (after the first time, becuase they choose to live in a dangerous environment)

should people taking up sports be expected to take out insurance to cover such eventualities

hill walkers and potholers are often "rescued" by volunteer bodies such as local mountain rescue organisations which are not funded by government. admittedly fire, ambulance and police are funded by government but 'all' you are paying there is the actaul operational cost (ie fuel used, maintenance on the helicopter and so on), rather than the purchase of equipment which exists as part fo the normal fit out of the emergency services.

The MoD used to argue that the helipcopter SAR service treated the doemstic rescue service as trainign for the SAR's real military role