We’re going to hear a lot about the NHS this week: mostly tributes and praise – and even a few prayers – all in recognition of its 75th anniversary on Wednesday. The loudest criticism you’re likely to hear will be about underfunding – which is not the fault of NHS officials, really, but rather the fault of politicians who set the health service’s budget. The NHS is only falling short on patient outcomes, the logic goes, because it’s being denied resources in the first place.
Is it really? New data published by the OECD this afternoon pops some of those birthday balloons. It reveals that the NHS actually remains one of the best-funded healthcare systems in the world. The numbers for 2022 are in, and as The Spectator’s data hub shows, the UK ranks sixth on the list for health expenditure as a percentage of GDP.
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