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7% is not generous in an international comparison. It's on a par with Lithuania or Costa Rica. Denmark spends 10% on health care, Germany 11.7%, Italy 8.7%. htt

7% is not generous in an international comparison. It's on a par with Lithuania or Costa Rica. Denmark spends 10% on health care, Germany 11.7%, Italy 8.7%. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/e26f669c-en/index.html?itemId=/content/component/e26f669c-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/e26f669c-en/index.html?i... The NHS is also under huge pressure because of all the European health care professionals that left after Brexit (you won't read about that in the Telegraph) and the huge number of sick days caused by COVID. I also feel they are way too quick to dismiss the idea that health issues are related to COVID. When kids were vaccinated against measles the death rate fell not just for measles, but for all infectious diseases. It's probably because measles damages the immune system. It's not unlikely that COVID had long term health effects that we don't yet fully understand, but which are starting to show up in the statistics.

dogma1138 4y ago
You are mixing figures here, OECD stats are for healthcare expenditures the UK currently spends about 12% of its GDP on healthcare and is aligned with most developed economies. This is different to NHS funding alone. Also comparing the UK where healthcare is predominantly a single payer system to countries like Germany isn’t apples to apples. Germany has a multi tiered private-public healthcare system and it’s not single payer.
- ErikCorry 4y ago
  Good point. But I can't make the numbers add up. If NHS is 7% and total health care is 12% then the NHS is only 58% of health spending, but how does it then make sense to say it's "predominantly single payer"? Looks to me like the private sector has exploded recently as people pay for private health care/insurance to cover the increasing gaps in the NHS coverage. This does nothing for those who are still just on the NHS. This looks to be backed up by: "Based on trends observed in early estimates of household final consumption expenditure, household spending on outpatient and hospital services, which include self-funded and insurance-funded treatments, grew by 24.5% and 31.3% respectively in 2021." https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/healthcareexpenditureukhealthaccountsprovisionalestimates/2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... But that link also says that NHS spending is 83% of health spending, so like I said I can't get the numbers to add up.
  - dogma1138 4y ago
    Because there are other things that go into healthcare that are accounted for in NHS funding such as hospices and elderly care. The 83% in your link is the government spending on healthcare as % of total healthcare expenditure not the NHS budget as % of total expenditure. The government funds other healthcare related expenses that aren’t direct NHS funding.

dogma1138 4y ago

You are mixing figures here, OECD stats are for healthcare expenditures the UK currently spends about 12% of its GDP on healthcare and is aligned with most developed economies. This is different to NHS funding alone. Also comparing the UK where healthcare is predominantly a single payer system to countries like Germany isn’t apples to apples. Germany has a multi tiered private-public healthcare system and it’s not single payer.

ErikCorry 4y ago
Good point. But I can't make the numbers add up. If NHS is 7% and total health care is 12% then the NHS is only 58% of health spending, but how does it then make sense to say it's "predominantly single payer"? Looks to me like the private sector has exploded recently as people pay for private health care/insurance to cover the increasing gaps in the NHS coverage. This does nothing for those who are still just on the NHS. This looks to be backed up by: "Based on trends observed in early estimates of household final consumption expenditure, household spending on outpatient and hospital services, which include self-funded and insurance-funded treatments, grew by 24.5% and 31.3% respectively in 2021." https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/bulletins/healthcareexpenditureukhealthaccountsprovisionalestimates/2021 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan... But that link also says that NHS spending is 83% of health spending, so like I said I can't get the numbers to add up.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  Because there are other things that go into healthcare that are accounted for in NHS funding such as hospices and elderly care. The 83% in your link is the government spending on healthcare as % of total healthcare expenditure not the NHS budget as % of total expenditure. The government funds other healthcare related expenses that aren’t direct NHS funding.