A week doesn’t go by without at least one horror story about the National Health Service hitting the headlines. But today you can take your pick. From the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which says the NHS will need £2,000 a year from each household to stay afloat, to the Care Quality Commission’s warning about patient safety in A&E, there’s a plethora of evidence that the NHS is on its last legs, and in desperate need of restructuring.
Many of the reports of the crisis in the NHS call for increased funding to compensate for the system’s underperformance. This week’s Spectator cover story reveals that Theresa May will be gifting the NHS the infamous pledge of £350 million per week extra by the next election as part of its 70th birthday next month. As James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson note, the cash boost is an undoubtably popular move. But as with all aspects of the modern-day healthcare debate in the UK, this change seems to reflect political considerations, not patient considerations.
Even if public spending on the NHS were to increase to the levels recommended today by the IFS or IPPR, it would still be the sick system of Europe, ranking in the bottom third of international comparisons for health system performance. According to the IFS, it will take a short-term increase of five per cent in annual spending to ‘enable waiting time targets to be met’.
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