UK does spend the same on healthcare as rich EU nations

BRITAIN is spending the same share of GDP on healthcare as most other wealthy European countries, according to analysts.

Leading economists have used a new method to calculate expenditure in several countries which includes social care for the first time.

They estimated that healthcare accounts for 9.7 per cent of the UK’s total spending on all goods and services. This is just above the average for the EU although still below France, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Previous estimates – which did not include social care – put the UK’s healthcare spending at 8.7 per cent of GDP (gross domestic product).

This was one of the lowest in Europe and had long been blamed for the NHS’s long waiting times and queues in A&E.

The figure has been used by politicians and doctors to criticise the Government for apparently not spending enough on healthcare.

But the authors of the latest analysis – who presented their findings on the British Medical Journal’s website – said this argument was no longer valid.

Professor John Appleby, chief economist of the Nuffield Trust, and Ben Gershlick, economics analyst at the Health Foundation, said: ‘The UK is spending what we would expect given its wealth.’

Their analysis ranks Britain ninth out of 15 comparable countries in western Europe in terms of healthcare spending per population.

Sweden is at the top at 11.1 per cent of GDP, closely followed by France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria.

Ireland is just ahead of the UK while Finland, Spain, Italy, Greece and Luxembourg are all below.

In a blog accompanying their analysis, Professor Appleby and Mr Gershlick wrote: ‘The UK is spending what we would expect given its wealth. How much we should spend on healthcare is still a live and important debate but the argument that we should spend more simply because we spend much less than the rest of Europe isn’t enough any more.’

While saying that the UK compares well with the EU average, they admitted that NHS spending would have to increase by about £25 billion a year to match frontrunners like France and Germany.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chairman of the British Medical Association’s council, said it would be more relevant to compare Britain with northern Europe rather than the likes of Greece, Italy and Portugal. He said: ‘The UK still lies behind other leading EU economies on health spending, with countries like Germany and France spending larger proportions of their GDP on health than the UK.

‘Years of underinvestment in the face of rising demand means our hospitals and GP surgeries are now full, waiting times are rising, access to certain treatment is being rationed and NHS staff are working under increasingly difficult circumstances.

‘If UK spending on health was to match that of the ten other leading European economies, patients would see almost £15 billion extra investment in the NHS in England within five years.

‘This extra money could be used to provide tens of thousands more beds, recruit many thousands more GPs and other staff and reverse the damaging cuts made to the public health budgets.’

A similar comparison with other countries was used by Tony Blair to justify a huge rise in NHS spending after he came to power in 1997. It brought the UK up to the average level for western Europe and the new analysis shows that it remains in that position.

‘Important debate’