I was very excited about the return of Doctor Who. Lots of unanswered questions out there, and lots of things to be revealed. I couldn't wait to find out what Moffat had in mind. So I should have been thrilled with Let's Kill Hitler, but it didn't quite come together for me.
I think most long term fans of Doctor Who like to try and figure out what is going to happen next, and how the various paradoxes can be resolved. I certainly have my own theories, and it can be quite fun to discuss with others, and compare with what actually happens.
I also have a reasonable feel for the story and how things sit, so it doesn't sit right when new characters are introduced all of a sudden, and retrospectively revealed to be really important. At the start of Let's Kill Hitler, we meet Mels* (which it later transpires is short for Melody). She's annoying, loud, constantly in trouble and deeply irritating, and is apparently Amy and Rory's best friend (and is in fact the cause of them being together).
My thought at this point in time was that she was some kind of mind reading alien who'd inserted herself into Amy and Rory's life to get access to the TARDIS. Alas, I was wrong.
So, thanks to Mel's shooting the TARDIS (for no real reason - just because... And that's always a bad reason for something to happen in a tv show) the gang manage to accidentally save Hitler from a time travelling shape-changing justice robot, manned by a bunch of miniaturised people (who incidentally seem to have bugger all idea how to run a military operation - and if it wasn't a military operation, it should have been).
Along the way, Mel gets shot and regenerates into River Song, but it's not the cheeky, flirty, funny River Song that we know. It is instead a River Song that acts like a spoilt teenager. I gather that was probably what they were aiming for, but someone hasn't done the maths (or possibly there's something else going on - we can hope) as they left the kid in 1969 (where it appeared 10ish?), Amy is around 23, so started school (age 5) in 1992ish? So the kid would have had to grow up from 1969 to 1992, then regenerated to be about 5. That would have meant (assuming age 10 at 1969) a total age of 33 when she looked 5. By the time she's grown up again to age 23ish, she'll have a real age of 51 - so why act like a stupid kid? It just grated - I like River Song, but didn't like this character that looked like her. Maybe that's the point.
Anyway, back to the title of the show. Let's Kill Hitler! Apart from one throwaway line at the start of the episode and saving Hitler from the aforementioned time travelling shape-changing robot, he gets shut in a cupboard and left there. The title is completely misleading. The episode has the great backdrop of Berlin 1938 and does nothing with it. Hitler and the question of his crimes (which he hasn't yet committed) are ignored. Hell, even the shape-changing time travelling robot is nothing more than a gimmick, as we never find out where it's from, who built it or where/what the "mothership" is. It seems like it's just there to pad out the episode a little bit.
This episode has three main strands: Hitler, the shape-changing time travelling robot and River Song, and really each one of them could easily fill an episode. It seems a shame that the first two are neglected in order to develop the River Song story, perhaps a bit quicker than necessary**. There is some joy in leaving some things unknown.
Overall, I'm glad Dr Who is back, but don't really feel like it's back yet - if that makes any sense. I'm hoping that the bits that were overlooked in this episode are revisited later in the season, and that next weeks episode is better.
* I know that technically she's not a new character, but this aspect of her is new - she was a big part of Amy's past, and has never been mentioned, or referred to. Like the Doctor says, she wasn't at the wedding (and yes, we know why she couldn't be there, but she couldn't have known that her older self would be there, so why wasn't she?) - surely Amy would have mentioned if her best friend couldn't make it?
** And does anyone else remember River Song describing the first time she met the Doctor? She says something like, "Here was this man that I knew nothing about, but he knew everything about me." Doesn't sound all that much like what happened... I'll have to re-watch and look up the quote
Wednesday, 31 August 2011
Thursday, 28 July 2011
G+ invites update
So far I've had over 1,000 requests for G+ invites, although there is some duplication included in those figures as some people have entered their email address more than once. I reckon I've sent out over 900 invites to real people.
Out of those people:
14 have left a rating on the market
11 paid £1 each (of which I received 70p)
9 have individually emailed me to ask for an invite
6 have left comments on the market
Since yesterday morning, the invites are coming in fairly steadily at about 15 per hour. The peak time was between 10pm last night and 2am this morning, when we hit about 17.5 per hour.
Out of those people:
14 have left a rating on the market
11 paid £1 each (of which I received 70p)
9 have individually emailed me to ask for an invite
6 have left comments on the market
Since yesterday morning, the invites are coming in fairly steadily at about 15 per hour. The peak time was between 10pm last night and 2am this morning, when we hit about 17.5 per hour.
Thursday, 14 July 2011
Sainsbury's pay
I used to work for Sainsbury's. I see from the Guardian that people are protesting the current wage levels. It's tempting to point out how lucky they are (when I joined, I was on £2.73 per hour) but probably more honest to point out that they do have a perfectly good option. If they don't like the pay there, they can get another job. If enough people did that, perhaps Sainsbury's would up their wage to keep their staff...
Looking at the article, the main gripe seems to be that Sainsbury's makes a massive profit, so should pay more. According to the London Stock Exchange website (no idea if that link will work - if not, search for SBRY on the site) they have a market cap of around £6 billion, and they're profits were £665m. That's around 11%, which is higher than average, but not necessarily excessive (most projections I've seen reckon on 5%-9% being normal).
But suppose they're right, and the bosses are doing absolutely the wrong thing by keeping all these massive profits (and presumably using a certain amount to grow the business?), and the excess should be spread out amongst the staff. First we need to determine what's the excess. A return of 5% would be poor, and would mean lots of people selling shares (driving the price down further and thus calling into question the long term viability of the company, and incidentally costing anyone in the employee share plan lots of money, but never mind all that) but might be acceptable to the staff - that would give £363m or so to spread amongst the staff.
There are two ways the cash could be distributed:
flat amount to each member of staff
150,000 staff (from wikipedia) working out at about £2,420 each, or £1.19 per hour, taking them to £7.50 per hour.
or
according to their current salary
total wage bill was ~£2bn in (from here (warning: pdf)), so adding £363m would increase the total by 18% or so, so the basic £6.31 mentioned in the article would go up to £7.45 per hour.
Note that this is not what they can afford, it's the most they could give if they were willing to seriously risk the long term viability of the company, so asking for £8.30 per hour is not really reasonable.
Looking at the article, the main gripe seems to be that Sainsbury's makes a massive profit, so should pay more. According to the London Stock Exchange website (no idea if that link will work - if not, search for SBRY on the site) they have a market cap of around £6 billion, and they're profits were £665m. That's around 11%, which is higher than average, but not necessarily excessive (most projections I've seen reckon on 5%-9% being normal).
But suppose they're right, and the bosses are doing absolutely the wrong thing by keeping all these massive profits (and presumably using a certain amount to grow the business?), and the excess should be spread out amongst the staff. First we need to determine what's the excess. A return of 5% would be poor, and would mean lots of people selling shares (driving the price down further and thus calling into question the long term viability of the company, and incidentally costing anyone in the employee share plan lots of money, but never mind all that) but might be acceptable to the staff - that would give £363m or so to spread amongst the staff.
There are two ways the cash could be distributed:
flat amount to each member of staff
150,000 staff (from wikipedia) working out at about £2,420 each, or £1.19 per hour, taking them to £7.50 per hour.
or
according to their current salary
total wage bill was ~£2bn in (from here (warning: pdf)), so adding £363m would increase the total by 18% or so, so the basic £6.31 mentioned in the article would go up to £7.45 per hour.
Note that this is not what they can afford, it's the most they could give if they were willing to seriously risk the long term viability of the company, so asking for £8.30 per hour is not really reasonable.
Taxing bankers won't send them overseas, honest
Interesting spin on the story here. The way they tell it, things are peachy and noone in the financial services industry wants to leave the UK. That means we can tax the bankers as much as we want, they're not going anywhere!
Looking at the numbers they present gives a rather different story however.
Looking at the numbers they present gives a rather different story however.
The majority of respondents (80%) had either not had the opportunity to move abroad (43%), declined an overseas opportunity (9%) or were not willing/able to relocate (28%).Fully 20% of those surveyed have moved abroad. I don't know about you, but I reckon that's quite a lot. Further, another 43% had not had the opportunity (presumably because they're happy where they are?) but they go on to say:
The 43% who had not had the opportunity to move abroad stated that they would however be open to the idea. New York (23%) was their preferred destination, followed by Hong Kong and Singapore (both 13%). Dubai and Sydney were close behind, both with 9%.So from the figures they give, 63% of financial services staff have either moved abroad or are willing to do so. I know that this is a small sample size, but I'd still consider that there's a definite problem if raising taxes on this particular sector...
Google Plus
Just so you know, I've got invites to G+. If anyone wants them, just leave a comment and I'll send one over :-)
Anyone using it and wishing to add me (there's not a lot to see, mind) can find me at https://plus.google.com/107542505388749016402/posts
Anyone using it and wishing to add me (there's not a lot to see, mind) can find me at https://plus.google.com/107542505388749016402/posts
Thursday, 26 May 2011
The whole Adele thing
Adele kicked up a bit of a fuss about having to pay 50% tax, as reported (and denigrated) by the Guardian, here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/may/25/adele-tax-grievances
As Tim Worstall points out, the article is not entirely accurate, but leaving that aside, I'd be very surprised if Adele did have to pay 50% tax.
The agreement that she has with the record company will say that she gets x% of the sales of her album. I've no idea what x is, but bear in mind that all CD sales are subject to VAT. This is at 20% currently, added on to the pre-VAT price, so effectively removing 16.67% of the money long before Adele sees it. For a given amount of sales, where Adele would have earned £100, she's now down to £83.33.
Then there's income tax and NI. Adele mentions paying £4m in tax. I'm not entirely sure whether she's treated as self employed or as an employee of the music company, but I'd assume the former, meaning NI is 2% and income tax is 50% on the vast majority of the income.
(Of course it'd be better if she was set up as a small company and paid herself dividends, in which case the income tax is 42.5% and I don't think there's any NI - I could be wrong though. It's worse if she's a normal employee, because then there's Employer's NI, Employee's NI and income tax to worry about.)
This means that of the £83.33 that she would theoretically get, she'll only actually receive £40.00. This, the actual tax rate that she's paying is more like 60%.
The money that she will still have to spend VAT on anything she spends on "non-essentials" (and I never really understood how clothing is non essential, but books are essential?), making the effective rate for the money spent thusly 66.67%. If she spends any money on things like cigarettes or alcohol it's considerably worse.
So there you have it - Adele's tax rate is really more like 60%
As Tim Worstall points out, the article is not entirely accurate, but leaving that aside, I'd be very surprised if Adele did have to pay 50% tax.
The agreement that she has with the record company will say that she gets x% of the sales of her album. I've no idea what x is, but bear in mind that all CD sales are subject to VAT. This is at 20% currently, added on to the pre-VAT price, so effectively removing 16.67% of the money long before Adele sees it. For a given amount of sales, where Adele would have earned £100, she's now down to £83.33.
Then there's income tax and NI. Adele mentions paying £4m in tax. I'm not entirely sure whether she's treated as self employed or as an employee of the music company, but I'd assume the former, meaning NI is 2% and income tax is 50% on the vast majority of the income.
(Of course it'd be better if she was set up as a small company and paid herself dividends, in which case the income tax is 42.5% and I don't think there's any NI - I could be wrong though. It's worse if she's a normal employee, because then there's Employer's NI, Employee's NI and income tax to worry about.)
This means that of the £83.33 that she would theoretically get, she'll only actually receive £40.00. This, the actual tax rate that she's paying is more like 60%.
The money that she will still have to spend VAT on anything she spends on "non-essentials" (and I never really understood how clothing is non essential, but books are essential?), making the effective rate for the money spent thusly 66.67%. If she spends any money on things like cigarettes or alcohol it's considerably worse.
So there you have it - Adele's tax rate is really more like 60%
Why the Laffer Curve shouldn't matter
The Laffer curve is often cited as a reason not to raise taxes. I think this is a disingenuous argument that rather misses the point. Let me explain...
For those of you who don't know, the Laffer curve is a theory that says that there is a level of tax that maximises revenue. If you raise the tax rate too high, people will be more inclined to avoid the tax, whether by using off-shore arrangements in the case of VAT, by becoming self employed and paying dividends in the case of NI and income tax, or even simply by working less (as each hour worked is worth less to the individual as the government's take rises - there comes a point when it's not worth the bother).
Further to the above, it has been suggested that the new 50% rate of tax will not increase tax revenue as it is too high - people will work less, employ accountants to avoid the tax or leave the country to avoid paying it (and the people being taxed are those most able to do these things).
I think that this misses the point. The whole idea behind taxes is that there are some things that we can't buy efficiently as individuals. Taxes are levied so that government can provide us with the things that only government can provide, while inconveniencing us as little as possible (in an ideal world).
If this maxim were followed, the total size of government would be much much smaller, and thus much less tax would be required to fund it. The Laffer curve is irrelevant because the purpose of taxation is not to raise as much money as possible, but to provide essentials only, and so we should never get anywhere near the point where we suffer from diminishing returns.
Consider the damage done to our economy by the government taking fully 50% of the fruits of our productive labour and pissing them up the wall...
For those of you who don't know, the Laffer curve is a theory that says that there is a level of tax that maximises revenue. If you raise the tax rate too high, people will be more inclined to avoid the tax, whether by using off-shore arrangements in the case of VAT, by becoming self employed and paying dividends in the case of NI and income tax, or even simply by working less (as each hour worked is worth less to the individual as the government's take rises - there comes a point when it's not worth the bother).
Further to the above, it has been suggested that the new 50% rate of tax will not increase tax revenue as it is too high - people will work less, employ accountants to avoid the tax or leave the country to avoid paying it (and the people being taxed are those most able to do these things).
I think that this misses the point. The whole idea behind taxes is that there are some things that we can't buy efficiently as individuals. Taxes are levied so that government can provide us with the things that only government can provide, while inconveniencing us as little as possible (in an ideal world).
If this maxim were followed, the total size of government would be much much smaller, and thus much less tax would be required to fund it. The Laffer curve is irrelevant because the purpose of taxation is not to raise as much money as possible, but to provide essentials only, and so we should never get anywhere near the point where we suffer from diminishing returns.
Consider the damage done to our economy by the government taking fully 50% of the fruits of our productive labour and pissing them up the wall...
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
That LPUK report
So, I've just read the report that was published regarding the whole furor over the post on Anna Raccoon's blog about Andrew P Withers. It's in a few places on the web, but the version I read was here:
http://pjcjournal.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/ncc-report-final.pdf
My thoughts:
It does come across as a bit of a hand-wave. Take point 7 for example, which is I think the thing that most people are worried about. There's no consideration of whether the accounts have been suitably managed, and the fact that it's taken over four months since a new treasurer was appointed and the books still haven't been handed over is "far from ideal and must not be allowed to happen again." This is something that crops up a few times in the report - things aren't ideal, mustn't happen again, but there's nothing to worry about.
The thing that really got me about point 7 was the complete indifference to the contents of the financial records. Apparently there are two options, either "The NCC may take the view that as the Electoral Commission has given the accounts submitted to them a clean bill of health (A1 in Andrew's words), there is no more to be said and we should consider the matter closed" or they could have someone carry out audits of the accounts over a number of years (which would be costly). The thing is, the Electoral Commission will sign off the accounts as long as they look ok, but they have no real idea what they're looking at. If someone puts down that they took thousands of pounds of expenses that sound legitimate (which is what worries people), the Electoral Commission will likely take them at their word - they're not going to request receipts or go over the accounts with a fine-toothed comb.
At the very least, whoever did the report should have looked at the accounts. Money in should be donations, membership subs and loans, and money out should be payments on loans and genuine expenses (and the expenses should ideally be documented with receipts on file). Furthermore, we're always campaigning for more transparency on expenses from MPs, at the very least we should do the same with the party - is there any valid reason not to publish the money in and out?
The rest of the points in the report don't seem to actually say a lot. For example, point 8 says something was done wrong and "should be regretted". Point 9 says that the matter should be investigated thoroughly, "... and, if true, not allowed to be repeated. It is the antithesis of libertarianism." Similar phrases can be found throughout.
Point 10 rather misses the point. Yes, the party should ideally have it's own address, but if the person who runs the website is the same person that deals with the post, then we'll still have the same problem. Ideally, the whole of the NCC should have their email addresses on the site as a minimum so that people can raise concerns. I know that people are busy, but we can't afford for one person or a small group to have a stranglehold on the communication channels.
The party is in dire need of some help. Right now it's falling apart, and without transparency, honesty and good communication I think it's days are over.
I was a member - My membership lapsed last year. I was planning to renew once I had a bit more money (I got married a little after becoming a member and money has been rather tight ever since) but now I don't know if I'm going to bother.
I really want there to be a Libertarian Party - problem is that the more I hear from some of the people involved in this fiasco, the less sure I am that this ever was a Libertarian party...
http://pjcjournal.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/ncc-report-final.pdf
My thoughts:
It does come across as a bit of a hand-wave. Take point 7 for example, which is I think the thing that most people are worried about. There's no consideration of whether the accounts have been suitably managed, and the fact that it's taken over four months since a new treasurer was appointed and the books still haven't been handed over is "far from ideal and must not be allowed to happen again." This is something that crops up a few times in the report - things aren't ideal, mustn't happen again, but there's nothing to worry about.
The thing that really got me about point 7 was the complete indifference to the contents of the financial records. Apparently there are two options, either "The NCC may take the view that as the Electoral Commission has given the accounts submitted to them a clean bill of health (A1 in Andrew's words), there is no more to be said and we should consider the matter closed" or they could have someone carry out audits of the accounts over a number of years (which would be costly). The thing is, the Electoral Commission will sign off the accounts as long as they look ok, but they have no real idea what they're looking at. If someone puts down that they took thousands of pounds of expenses that sound legitimate (which is what worries people), the Electoral Commission will likely take them at their word - they're not going to request receipts or go over the accounts with a fine-toothed comb.
At the very least, whoever did the report should have looked at the accounts. Money in should be donations, membership subs and loans, and money out should be payments on loans and genuine expenses (and the expenses should ideally be documented with receipts on file). Furthermore, we're always campaigning for more transparency on expenses from MPs, at the very least we should do the same with the party - is there any valid reason not to publish the money in and out?
The rest of the points in the report don't seem to actually say a lot. For example, point 8 says something was done wrong and "should be regretted". Point 9 says that the matter should be investigated thoroughly, "... and, if true, not allowed to be repeated. It is the antithesis of libertarianism." Similar phrases can be found throughout.
Point 10 rather misses the point. Yes, the party should ideally have it's own address, but if the person who runs the website is the same person that deals with the post, then we'll still have the same problem. Ideally, the whole of the NCC should have their email addresses on the site as a minimum so that people can raise concerns. I know that people are busy, but we can't afford for one person or a small group to have a stranglehold on the communication channels.
The party is in dire need of some help. Right now it's falling apart, and without transparency, honesty and good communication I think it's days are over.
I was a member - My membership lapsed last year. I was planning to renew once I had a bit more money (I got married a little after becoming a member and money has been rather tight ever since) but now I don't know if I'm going to bother.
I really want there to be a Libertarian Party - problem is that the more I hear from some of the people involved in this fiasco, the less sure I am that this ever was a Libertarian party...
Monday, 23 May 2011
Equality?
I saw this story in the Guardian the other day. Well, I say that I saw it - more accurately, it was brought to my attention. I don't really read any dead-tree papers, and stick to the Telegraph about once a week on the interwebs - that's all the news I can take.
Anyway, the story. A few points struck me as interesting:
Do any of our elected representatives have a view?
Right, so Annette Brook (who coincidentally has a fairly slim majority and more women in her constituency will be affected by this than make up her majority) reckons that women have suffered injustices in the pension system. Well, I'm not saying that they didn't, 50 years ago, but nowadays things are pretty peachy for them. In fact, as women live longer than men, any Defined Benefits that they get (such as final salary pensions or the state pension) are worth more to women than they are to men (because they get to draw them for longer). Add to that the fact that they still have a lower state pension age than men, and we can see things are definitely not equal.
(And incidentally, that's something that annoys me. The Barber judgement said that all pension schemes had to provide the same benefits to men and women - including giving them the same retirement age - from 17 May 1990. This Judgement didn't apply to state schemes, for some reason - I want to know why not?)
That last sentence is the craziest - she wants the government to say: "We really do care about giving equal treatment to the citizens of this country." Surely the best way to do that is to give all the men and women the same retirement age (just as they're planning to do) - hell they could go even further and spend the same on all men and women when they reach retirement age, so that they can buy an annuity - I doubt that Annette would approve of that though, as the women would get less per year than the men...
Anyway, the story. A few points struck me as interesting:
Ok, so there are some people campaigning against the changes to the pensions bill. The country is in a proper black hole right now, as far as debt goes - where do they recommend that we find the money? No clue - they just don't want to be personally impacted. I can understand that.
Politicians came under siege as hundreds of women gathered at parliament to protest at plans to increase the state pension age more quickly.
The protest, organised by charity AgeUK, coincided with the second reading of the pensions bill, which included a revised timetable for changes to the state pension age.
Do any of our elected representatives have a view?
Annette Brooke, who has 1,400 female constituents who will be affected by the proposed changes, spoke against the changes at a debate in Westminster Hall last week.
She said: "Historically women have often suffered injustices in the pensions system. Whenever you have a sharp cut-off date there is an injustice. The proposed reforms will mean that women born between 1953 and 1954 will be caught out. However, it is not too late to have another look at these reforms, to ensure that once again women, and this age group in particular, do not disproportionally lose out. It is not fair to keep moving the goalposts as people get older.
"We know this is not about a large number of people, so money could be found by the coalition government. We need to know how much it would cost to even out matters. This is an opportunity for the coalition to say, 'We really do care about giving equal treatment to the citizens of this country.'"
Right, so Annette Brook (who coincidentally has a fairly slim majority and more women in her constituency will be affected by this than make up her majority) reckons that women have suffered injustices in the pension system. Well, I'm not saying that they didn't, 50 years ago, but nowadays things are pretty peachy for them. In fact, as women live longer than men, any Defined Benefits that they get (such as final salary pensions or the state pension) are worth more to women than they are to men (because they get to draw them for longer). Add to that the fact that they still have a lower state pension age than men, and we can see things are definitely not equal.
(And incidentally, that's something that annoys me. The Barber judgement said that all pension schemes had to provide the same benefits to men and women - including giving them the same retirement age - from 17 May 1990. This Judgement didn't apply to state schemes, for some reason - I want to know why not?)
That last sentence is the craziest - she wants the government to say: "We really do care about giving equal treatment to the citizens of this country." Surely the best way to do that is to give all the men and women the same retirement age (just as they're planning to do) - hell they could go even further and spend the same on all men and women when they reach retirement age, so that they can buy an annuity - I doubt that Annette would approve of that though, as the women would get less per year than the men...
Wednesday, 11 May 2011
How much is a human life worth?
A lot of people seem to hate any discussion of costs. You'll often hear "if it saves just one life, it will have been worth it" but this really isn't practical. If it was, we'd all be wearing full body armour the whole time, and never driving faster than 10 mph.
I freely admit that I admire capitalism. I think that markets provide a fantastic way of getting the most bang for your buck, and I'd like to consider how market-based thinking can be used to save more lives.
Consider this completely made up example - you have a hundred people who are ill. 50 of them have illness A and 50 have illness B. Illness A reduces your average lifespan to 5 years and costs £100,000 to treat, whereas illness B reduces average lifespan to 10 years and costs £50,000 to treat. Suppose that the average lifespan for one of these people who had no illness would be 40 more years, what is the cost of a life?
Treating Illness A gives you an extra 35 years, for a cost of £100,000 - or £2,857.14 per year. Treating Illness B gives you an extra 30 years, for a cost of £50,000 - or £1,666.67 per year.
Thus, Illness B should surely get funding before Illness A.
The reason being that the money we spend on healthcare is limited. It comes from somewhere (the taxpayer's pocket) and there isn't an infinite supply. In an ideal world (one with infinite energy and resources perhaps) we'd treat everyone that's ill, but in our world we have limited money, and spending money treating Illness A costs 70% more than treating Illness B for the same result.
What I'd like to see is a proper evaluation carried out on the various things that we do, looking at (among other things) quality of life, cost/benefit ratio, success rates, recurrence rates, etc. Then we can build a picture of what it really costs to treat the various problems that people have, and we can figure out how to spend our healthcare money most efficiently.
Pros: More lives saved for less money spent
Cons: Might lead to bad press
One big problem I can see. If the system is taken to extremes and every case looked at on it's merit, treatment for the elderly would be seen as considerably more expensive than treatment for anyone else (largely because you don't get that many extra years from successful treatment). This could be offset either by not breaking it down at an individual level (which is sort of against the whole point of this) or by the government funding part of the treatment (well, if you had Illness B we'd pay for it and that costs £50k to treat, so we'll put £50k towards the cost of your treatment if you can pay the rest). This would likely encourage private topup insurance.
I freely admit that I admire capitalism. I think that markets provide a fantastic way of getting the most bang for your buck, and I'd like to consider how market-based thinking can be used to save more lives.
Consider this completely made up example - you have a hundred people who are ill. 50 of them have illness A and 50 have illness B. Illness A reduces your average lifespan to 5 years and costs £100,000 to treat, whereas illness B reduces average lifespan to 10 years and costs £50,000 to treat. Suppose that the average lifespan for one of these people who had no illness would be 40 more years, what is the cost of a life?
Treating Illness A gives you an extra 35 years, for a cost of £100,000 - or £2,857.14 per year. Treating Illness B gives you an extra 30 years, for a cost of £50,000 - or £1,666.67 per year.
Thus, Illness B should surely get funding before Illness A.
The reason being that the money we spend on healthcare is limited. It comes from somewhere (the taxpayer's pocket) and there isn't an infinite supply. In an ideal world (one with infinite energy and resources perhaps) we'd treat everyone that's ill, but in our world we have limited money, and spending money treating Illness A costs 70% more than treating Illness B for the same result.
What I'd like to see is a proper evaluation carried out on the various things that we do, looking at (among other things) quality of life, cost/benefit ratio, success rates, recurrence rates, etc. Then we can build a picture of what it really costs to treat the various problems that people have, and we can figure out how to spend our healthcare money most efficiently.
Pros: More lives saved for less money spent
Cons: Might lead to bad press
One big problem I can see. If the system is taken to extremes and every case looked at on it's merit, treatment for the elderly would be seen as considerably more expensive than treatment for anyone else (largely because you don't get that many extra years from successful treatment). This could be offset either by not breaking it down at an individual level (which is sort of against the whole point of this) or by the government funding part of the treatment (well, if you had Illness B we'd pay for it and that costs £50k to treat, so we'll put £50k towards the cost of your treatment if you can pay the rest). This would likely encourage private topup insurance.
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