To extend free doctors to under 17

How are free doctor appointments good for health? Obviously by the time you get there your sick! This route is a perpetual election beat up. More money for health! More! More! More!
And is the nation healthier for it? Apparently not or else this wouldn't be an election issue - again. And that's what it seems to be mostly, an election issue not a health issue.
Time to come down hard on the corporate's who brainwash kids and parents into partaking of their junk food. Time to make healthy food the only option and time to de-stress the population with more leisure time.
Time for less tax on all sporting goods and anything else that gets people moving. And time to reduce the toxicity of our environment. Time for healthy homes.
Positive outcome? Reduction in number of institutions/ hospitals/ doctors and nurses i.e tax dollars, and we all get a healthier nation.

Name change might help. Ministry of Sick.

Agree

I think the policy should be for under 25s.
Typically most young people don't go to the doctor much.
so the increase won't cost much.
Also it is better to catch problems early, which means young.
Thus young people will end up contributing more in the future to society.

sure, but to support the proposal you'll want to think about how it should be funded.

Didn't Labour just announce this as their policy?

I agree fully with @johnmartin . Time to actually say it as it is rather than beating around the bush with micro-adjusted rhetoric.

Definitely agree with what @johnmartin says and think healthy diet, cooking and how to keep healthy (which is the normal state) should be taught in schools. If this was already happening in the home and in families it wouldn't be necessary to teach it, but it isn't happening. Band aid solutions don't work.

I'd rather see free GP visits for everyone.

Generally speaking you can determine the optimum number, through statistics, of doctors for the local community, the region and then the country. We have the government hire that number of doctors and provide clinics for them. This is actually the cheapest and most viable methods for providing health services. This has been proved - just compare the US system with ours. The US system costs nearly three times as much as ours and isn't any better and only 5/6ths of their population is insured which means that 1/6th isn't getting the health services that they need.

And, yes, we can also look to better education about foods and exercise in school. I can say that sports and PE in schools is what drove me away from exercise.

How does the fact that the US system sucks prove that statistical analysis will reveal the optimum level of funding?

It doesn't, our and other public health systems do. Our system comes close to meeting our needs. It's not perfect but it's far better, and cheaper, than what the free-market provides.

Accidents are fairly constant across society and so is illness. From that we can determine how many doctors/nurses, support staff and the equipment that they need per head of population. We then, through our taxes, provide that amount on a pay-go basis.