michael howard is now officially the leader of the tory party

lol - vienna95 - sorry if im not quite up to your standards but im doing my best lol. You have to remember how inferrior i am to you..please forgive me almighty one lol

bearing in mind the differences in our probable CVs, its not that funny.

I don't care much for your thoughts or opinions.

Enjoy living in your small, narrow minded world.

I thought Thatcherism was dead! Looks like Howard is gonna resurect it.

Poor old Tories.

From my understanding of the proposed Tory health/education vouchers, they would only be of real benefit to the already wealthy who could afford to pay the full costs anyway.
If the education voucher would be worth say £3,000 pa that is barely enough to pay one terms fees at an independent school. The only ones to benefit would be those who can top up the vouchers to pay full years fees - they would be the ones' with plenty of dosh anyway, certainly not your average family.
So I can't see that proposal being attractive enough to gain the votes of non-party followers as they could get no benefit from it.

Thats true. Same with health. An operation would cost around £9K but you will only get £3K so you will have to find £6K to take up the voucher.

and these figures come from?

the contribution from the state would be flexible and non-fixed, and based on demographic study, would dramatically open up the choice of private care to a substantial proportion of the public. youre understanding is wrong, based on guess work.

I heard it from somewhere. Private operations cost about three times as much as NHS operations so that figure is probably right.

So would it be means tested? If not then it's
open to abuse by the extremely wealthy.

I am not the one who was guessing, rather these were figures quoted in the Independent and Times. Unless you're referring to something else.

since the consultation paper has just been concluded, i find it hard to assume that current NHS/private cost differences will be the basis for state contibution under a passport system.

Haven't they said that the voucher would be to the value of NHS treatment?

If it is over then that's even more shocking paying thr irch even more to go private!

as far as im aware, the percentage of the cost has not been decided, and would not be rigidly fixed. its possible it may be between 60% (as in finland) or 85%( as in France) of the total treatment costs.

80% of the NHS cost or total cost of treatment in private?