There is another post below about funding adult social care from a private fund
There is another post below about what MPs from 3 parties said about ring-fencing social care
I think there should be a ring-fenced fund for health and social services, and a ring fenced fund for welfare benefits. National funds, debated in parliament, and sub-divided by region according to need. I think these notional funds should become more actual and clear over time, and be linked to something like all of VAT revenue plus more. I think that embassies, circuses, submarines and the like should not have a ring-fenced budged. I think that insurance-like services are what people pay tax for, and should be accounted-for in an insurance-like way.
This is a post about getting people to be more healthy - live fast die young as Blondie put it - rather than being depressed or demented or diabetic or dotty or desparados in some way that's less fun.
One part of this has already been done. It is to label parts of NHS budgets as "health promotion" and re-allocate them to councils, who at best use them for adult social care and at worst use them for a new Town Hall. I doubt any council is skilled in promoting health - councils have trouble being good at any one thing because they do so many different things with so many people involved. Their accounts don't track the effects of more or less spending either - they don't link spending in one area with saving in another.
But there are instances of better cycle lanes of maybe free swimming passes or more hedges in the centres of dual carriageways that might make a difference.
I think that central government, with laws and ministries, and perhaps the EU, can make a big difference.
Label the health data of mass-produced food in as large a typeface as fits.
This would inform people about the food they're eating, and the advice they get on telly or from GPs. At the moment there is a system where smokers face rather disgusting images on their fag packets, which I think is over-kill, while eaters of saturated fats can be blithely unaware because the food labelling is too small to read. I don't think this is too paternal; I think it's just giving information in more readable way. I don't think this is impossible. If it can't be done by regulation, it could be done by charging higher VAT on badly labelled mass-produced food. As for food made in smaller batches, the same principal applies but the job that grocers have to do is different. They may not have a packet for a particular type of food. Obtaining the information to print might be a more significant part of the price of the food. I think the GLA has plans for nutrition labelling on restaurant signs, and nobody has said it's impossible.
Tax fags & booze by unit of tar or alcohol, rather than by litre or pack.
I don't know if this is possible but there have been efforts with alcohol to enforce minimum prices or such like; this is a similar idea. The current tax system has led to a progressive strengthening of beer strength over the centuries. People who don't like fags argue that the cancerous compounds are too complicated to measure and tax, I expect, but a BBC book from years ago called "Can you avoid cancer?" suggested that tar was a major indicator of how dangerous a fag is. Since then, a generation has talked about secondary effects, and "sending out messages" and generally acted like school prefects, but I still believe what I read in a BBC book decades ago.
Print nutritional data on till receipts
Here's an idea for a pilot scheme that one of the supermarkets might try if given a subsidy to try it. Build nutritional data into the same stock database that tracks price and availability for the till receipt. The big supermarkets have already tried adding special offers and nectar points; I don't think this is much more complicated. As a result, there could be more shops printing out nutritional data at the bottom of the till receipt as well as the total price and the special offer on petrol. There could also be a tax or regulation to discourage advertising of fatty foods that are often eaten as part of an unbalanced diet. And a tax on meat - one of those categories of food - to justify high spending that exists at the food standards standards agency to regulate meat sales. I should have slipped that one in un-noticed in the middle of a paragraph, because some of the few people who read this will think "extra tax for meat: never!", but I hope those people read the other paragraphs as well, in case they agree with the rest.
