Healthcare spending in Europe – The right amount of spending from UK perspective

Wed, 2017 / 11 / 15

The National Health Service in the UK (NHS) is recognized to deal with small financial resources and is often criticized. Furthermore, international comparisons revealed, that the UK spent less on healthcare than the European average . However, updated statistical methods by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the UK and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) for other countries suggest that the data has previously underestimated how much the UK spends on health care compared to other countries. The numbers from the new calculation for the year 2014 show, that the UK spends 9.8% of GDP, which is around the same average amount that other EU countries spent. Nevertheless, UK’s health spending would need to be increased by £24bn (31.4bn $) to reach the healthcare spending of Sweden.

Furthermore, the new statistical description gives insight to different areas of spending. The UK for example has higher expenditures in long-term care compared to curative care. John Appleby, director of research and chief economist at Nuffield Trust, London and Ben Gershlik, economic analyst at the Health Foundation, London, published a detailed analysis of the data in the British Medical Journal. They describe, that “as the population gets older, and lives longer with more morbidities, preventive and long-term care will become more important. Understanding how money is being spent in these areas across the EU can help inform this transition from a more traditional medical model (with a strong focus on curative care) to a different approach and gives an idea of the financial implications of this.”

They argue, that investments in health and social care affect each other. Unfortunately, UK and around half of the OECD countries do not publish data about social-care budgets that are not health-related. Hence, a comparison between the overall efforts on care and health care is barely possible.

„Being average internationally is not synonymous with the most desirable level of funding (or, indeed, a level that maximizes the benefits of the country’s scarce resources) “, Appleby and Gershlik conclude. As consequence, the government should not be content with being average but instead should interpret the figures as emphasis for what is possible to spend on healthcare.

Read more details in the original analysis: http://www.bmj.com/content/358/bmj.j3568