The spending review and the NHS
The NHS must reduce demand for healthcare with spending increases nearing their limits News reports that the NHS is one of the main beneficiaries of the spending review conceal some inconvenient truths. The uplift in budgets of around 3 per cent a year is welcome, but below the long term average of 3.6 per cent a year. It also requires the NHS to deliver implausible productivity improvements of 2 per cent a year. These improvements depend in part on investment in new buildings and technology which will be constrained by the government’s decision to hold capital funding flat.1 Over much of the period since the second world war, increases in public spending on health have been possible in part because spending on defence and on funding the national debt have fallen. With debt now at the highest level since the early 1960s and defence spending rising in the face of global insecurities, more of the same is no longer possible. The …
