Britain's healthcare: A tax-funded National Health Service (NHS) which is free for everyone to use is unsustainable and should be scrapped, Britain's most senior doctor has said.
Dr Bernie Ribeiro, the new president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said healthcare in Britain should be paid for through a social insurance system.
Under the scheme, similar to those used in France and Germany, patients would pay a proportion of the cost of their treatment and take out insurance to cover that amount.
Dr Ribeiro told the Daily Telegraph: "If we are to provide healthcare free at the point of need all the time for patients, then I don't think that's achievable in the present structure. We will have to look hard at an alternative system."
He said the rising cost of technology and medical staff would make a tax-funded NHS unsustainable in the medium term. "If we're going to have a healthcare system suited to the future, we've got to be prepared to invest in it. I don't personally believe that can be done out of pure taxation."
Dr Ribeiro said the social insurance system would generate extra resources for healthcare and make people value the treatment they got. "We're not a poor country, the working population is reasonably well paid, we could afford our workers to make an identifiable contribution towards healthcare - not one hidden in national insurance and taxation."
Under the system, he said, contributions would be means-tested, with the poorest paying nothing at all.
He said the British government needed to make some tough choices about what should be available on the NHS, adding that his preference was for the best emergency care possible, with elective work considered for patient fees.