A cold, hard look at where Britain lags behind on health spending

SIR – In her appeal for higher taxes to fund the NHS, Dr Jennifer Dixon of the Health Foundation (Letters, February 9) ignores the most salient data.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development places Britain’s health spending in 13th position among the 35 most developed economies, at 9.8 per cent of GDP (the only sensible method of comparison).

We outspend Australia and New Zealand, which have a superior life expectancy. Most countries spending more than us have aged demographic profiles, such as Germany and Japan.

Moreover, between 2000 and 2015 health spending rose faster here than in any other country except Japan and Sweden. Current overall expenditure is well above the 8.7 per cent spent in Labour’s last year in office.

The only area of health spending where Britain lags far behind (in 22nd place) is the pitifully low 2 per cent spent in the private sector.

The Government should ignore the obsolete and puerile opposition from Labour, the health unions, the BBC and politically motivated charities such as Dr Dixon’s Health Foundation, and begin to incentivise greater private health and social care. Philip Duly Haslemere, Surrey SIR – It is universally accepted that the NHS has fundamental problems – not only of how to pay for it. Politicians are so frightened of upsetting their electorate that we stagger on without any serious assessment of what to do.

We have reached the stage when an independent review is needed into the whole scheme – its funding, management, structure and staffing. It is so important that the appointment of a Royal Commission is merited, in order to make recommendations for implementation by whoever is in power when it reports. John Cuthbert Sevenoaks, Kent SIR – One reason so many old people go through A&E is that care homes are desperate to cover themselves if an old person becomes unwell. I was called to my mother’s care home because an ambulance had been sent for. Yet my mother did not seem to be specifically unwell, just rather faint. I requested she be given a little time to perk up with me beside her. Within minutes she was feeling better.

Knowing how bad A&E is for the old, I have asked for my mother to be taken there only in a real emergency.

Many elderly people attending A&E simply need a drip to rehydrate them. It gives almost instant relief. Neither GPs nor paramedics may attach such a drip in situ. If they could, fewer of the elderly would need to go to A&E. Christine Wilson Newtownabbey, Co Antrim SIR – Those complaining about BBC reports on the NHS fail to realise that the BBC only employs outstanding people who are never wrong and are always impartial. The BBC knows that only the stupid don’t understand this. Vincent O’Shea Stamford, Lincolnshire