As we all know, the NHS is crippled and will continue to struggle/become more crippled for a long time yet. This is now so bad that people are dying as a result of waiting for medical attention, including urgent cancer operations. 

Many people throughout the UK pay independently for Private Medical Insurance. There are a few main reasons for this but one of the most common, especially in the last 2-3 years, would be speed of being seen and receiving treatment. Rather than wait on a 2 year wait list to join another wait list only to receive the NHS's initial triage that they usually insist on, they have paid for a policy that enables them to be seen in a matter of weeks and sometimes days.

What this also does is take the strain off of the demand for the NHS and even though we pay National Insurance from our earnings, policy holders are also paying the premiums to do so. So why does it therefore make sense to sting the payer through a tax that does not go towards the NHS budget? 

For those that do not know, the current standard rate of IPT (Insurance Premium Tax) on insurance policies is 12%.

By removing IPT from PMI policies, we would be making it more affordable for a lot of people to take their health into their own hands and take away some of the demand on the NHS. With the money saved from this, the NHS can financially focus on improving their resource for extremely stretched areas of their service, such as emergencies (ambulances, nurses/doctors on the emergency wards etc), mental health and maternity. During the Pandemic, it was constantly drilled into us to "save our NHS" and "protect our NHS", why don't we start asking the government to take some of this responsibility instead of always relying on us?