Figures that don’t add up

ANDY Maciver (“Here’s a simple idea to change the way we think about NHS”, The Herald, May 5) advises readers to “do the maths”. He should take his own advice. An average earner on £25,000 per year would pay combined tax and National Insurance of about £4,530 in England and a bit less, £4,510, in Scotland based on the current National Insurance threshold of £9,880 per annum (the actual figures for 2022-23 will be lower by about £270 because the National Insurance threshold increases in July to £12 570), and not the “let’s say £8,000” as stated in his article.

Also, why does he quote the estimated cost per person for the NHS and some European countries in dollars (US I presume)? A simple multiplication could have converted the OECD US dollar figures into pounds sterling, allowing a direct comparison with the average earnings and tax and NI figures. I suspect that many readers may have missed the currency change in the middle of his article.

Des Mcghee,

Milngavie.