The demand on NHS services is often cited as the reason for its struggles. From a purely economic demand and supply point of view this is correct.
The NHS is (currently) publicly funded. This relies on public support for paying tax. When the argument was made most famously in 1992 by labour that people should pay more tax to fund the NHS they were defeated. Note that Labour did not promise an income tax rate rise but a new 50p tax rate on high earners, so the basic clash for most was actually between the same income tax rate (25p) and a tax cut offered by the Conservatives of 20p.
In the opinion of this blog, an article suggesting that this was not the reason that Labour lost suffers from the same polling issues as the pre-election polls, namely that people will admit to one thing in public that may not be their true position. Not many people I know would say that they want more money for themselves over the homeless (out loud).
The reason for the lack of support for the NHS when it comes to paying tax is mainly down to the fact that the vast majority of people in the country are in good health. This is the same logic employed by Boris Johnson when cutting fire services, where he told the London Assembly that they were
” continuing to reduce the incidence of fire ”
No fires, then you don’t have to pay for a fire service.
This logic appears to extend to the population at large who value the NHS conceptually but do not value it enough to pay tax to support it. This is not a position that most regular users of the NHS adopt.
The biggest problem facing the NHS today may well not be the number of ill people placing demands on its resource, but the number of healthy people under the illusion of their own immortality, that do not value it.
While the trend is apparently rising, with up to 49% prepared to pay more tax, previous experience shows that polls count for little when a healthy person scratches their ballot.