you're misunderstanding the issue. NHS funding _always_ increases. Its not increased by enough and social care (a different budget) has been cut meaning that ho

you're misunderstanding the issue. NHS funding _always_ increases. Its not increased by enough and social care (a different budget) has been cut meaning that hospitals have to deal with patients that have nowhere to be discharged. This is all due to 2008 can kicking. The needed to cut, didn't want to get blamed for cutting so just massively cut central funding for councils who were left to make the hard decisions. Year on year the cuts increased the drive for "efficiencies" grew. There is no slack left and nothing left to cut that isn't obvious. I hope that someone learns that just because you've taken the cost of the balance sheet doesn't mean the problem it was solving goes away, it just ends up as an inefficiency somewhere else, in this case in the NHS where staff cannot discharge perfectly healthy patients.