THE COST OF HEALTH
This is where the UK ranks in global spending on health - and how other countries pay for theirs
THE NHS might have its critics in America - but the UK spends far less on health than our counterparts over the Atlantic. Figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) show that the UK spends 10 per cent of its total wealth on healthcare. That compares with 17 per cent in America - by far the highest of any Western country. The UK’s spending is slightly behind other nations that have a taxpayerfunded health system, like Sweden, Japan, Canada and Norway. All those nations spend 11 per cent of their gross domestic product on healthcare. The data shows the countries with the highest spending all have American-style systems of mandatory health insurance. Switzerland, for example, spends 12 per cent of its wealth on healthcare. Certain other countries have a twotier payment scheme, with basic care paid for by the state but specialist treatment funded through private insurance. France, the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia use this system, and all spend between 10-11 per cent of their total wealth on health. American president Donald Trump sparked outcry in the UK last month when he suggested the NHS was “going broke and not working”. He cited a march in Britain as evidence - failing to realise it was actually a march to protect, rather than to protest against, the NHS. Polling has consistently show that despite coming under economic strain, the NHS remains a hugely popular institution across the political divide. In recent years, concerns have been raised about the level of privatesector activity within the health service. A report by NHS Improvement found the amount spent on outsourcing elective procedures to the private sector increased from £241 million in 2015/16 to £381 million in 2016/17. Dr Tony O’Sullivan, chair of Keep Our NHS Public and a retired consultant paediatrician, said: “Healthcare is undermined when staff are taken over by a private company whose main motivation is a profitoriented motive at odds with putting a person’s health first. “When underresourced NHS services can no longer deliver on targets adequately, the public may begin to lose confidence and that may result in less public opposition to NHS contracts being outsourced to private companies. “Private healthcare alters the balance in the patient-doctor relationship. The motivation to reduce costs and maximise profits, in a cost controlled budget, will also lead to treatment denial or rationing.” A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “We are fully committed to a worldclass NHS free at the point of the use, now and in the future, which is why we gave it top priority in the recent Budget with an extra £2.8 billion allocated over the next two years. “Claims of privatisation are misleading - the NHS spends just 8 pence in every pound on private healthcare.”