On NHS Funding

In posting this I am not for one moment suggesting that the NHS is not under great pressure or ruling out the idea that still more resources may be required.

I am merely pointing out that the problems the health service faces are because of increased demand, not because the government has failed to put any more money into it.




Channel 4 Factcheck endorsed Dominic Raab's claims that the Conservatives have put £12 billion more into the NHS after allowing for inflation and recently promised a further £6 billion during this parliament, that there are more doctors working in the NHS than ever before and that the NHS has more flu vaccines available than ever before. See link here.)

Comments

Jim said…
Yes the NHS has many problems, but sometimes the answer is not to just keep throwing more and more money at a problem hoping it fixes itself, it seldom does.

Chris Whiteside said…
I 50% agree with that. Where you are absolutely right is that no amount of money will "fix it" because the problem is that demand is both increasing and so far beyond anything which we could possibly afford as to be effectively infinite. So whatever you spend people will rightly be trying to do as much as possible with that money, and there will still be a service under pressure and potential needs which are not met.

Hence the concept of "underfunding" the health service or any other service for which you have unlimited demand is of no practical use because there is no level of funding at which people would not be making the case for more.

However, that does not mean that there are not genuine benefits from trying to meet as many of those needs as realistically possible, so there will always be a case for spending more and a legitimate debate about how much we can afford.

Spending more on the NHS is not necessarily a waste of money just because you cannot "fix" the problem of shortages.

However, it is also important that whatever money you do spend on the NHS is spent as efficiently as possible - and I think there are more lessons we can learn in this area.

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