Doctors group calls for NHS funding alternatives

A group of medics, known as Doctors for Reform, has warned that the funding of the NHS needs to be reviewed if the UK’s health service is to be managed properly.

The group has written to the leading political parties explaining that taxpayer money is insufficient to fund a service that is struggling to cope with patient demand.

The letter submitted by the group, which has 900 doctors in its ranks, calls for mixed funding of the NHS to ensure it does not slip any further behind standards seen elsewhere in Europe.

The letter says: “A mixed funding system with other sources of finance, equitably raised, would allow gaps in today’s NHS service to be filled and a modern, truly comprehensive service to emerge.”

It also acknowledges “there is no doubt of the scale of the extra resources that have been put into the NHS” but that without additional resources “the situation will deteriorate rather than improve in coming years”.

The Doctors for Reform suggestions are supported by the findings of an ICM poll, which revealed that two in three people think that public demands will not be fulfilled if the NHS continues to operate under its current structure.

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