This is going to get up a lot of people's noses, but you have just put into words exactly how I feel about it all Doc John.
In Germany, a substantial part of my pay disappears to the health insurance companies before I see it. I can live with that, but they now have the right to levy mandatory surcharges, which I must pay directly. Not only that, they can now raise them as and when they please and they have the power to freeze my bank account without a court order if I am in arrears. The Conservatives will not declare this as their policy in the UK, but over the next ten years, I believe you can expect to see them moving in this direction. It will be done incrementally, as it has been over here. You see, at the moment, too much money is being spent on treating patients and not enough has been finding its way into the pockets of the shareholders and the people who run the "service" companies.