UK spending less on health than its EU counterparts.

A report last month by The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Health Foundation, commissioned by the NHS Confederation, concluded that in order to appropriately address the needs of an ageing population and young adults living with disabilities, NHS funding would need to be increased by at least 4% per year for the next 15 years.
Now a second report by same foundation has concluded that whilst the UK is committing more funding to healthcare than it has previously, the 9.5% of national income it spends on health is a lot less than Europe’s two other largest economies, Germany (11.3%) and France (11%). The report claims that the UK could add an extra £30 billion to the health budget if it were to spend the same amount of national income on health as Germany. Figures from 2015 showed that the UK employed 2.8 doctors per 1,000 people, much fewer than the 4.1 doctors per 1,000 people employed in Germany and the 3.3 doctors per 1,000 people employed in France over the same period.
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the NHS Confederation said: “The choice we have to make is what sort of health and care system we are willing to pay for. Increasing funding through taxation in line with this report’s findings would still only take us to the lower-middle ranks of comparable European countries in terms of the amount of tax we pay. The evidence shows that we cannot go on running as we are. We face a choice between significant investment or a period of managed decline.”