The Tories have been trying to undermine the NHS in a bid to deliver private healthcare for the benefit of those who own companies in that sector for so long that it is almost normal to now think that is what is happening in our healthcare system.
John Burn-Murdoch has published a Twitter thread based on his articles in the FT on this issue, comparing health outcomes in the UK and the USA. The first three tweets were as follows:
There is much more in the thread. I stop at this point for a good reason. As John Burn-Murdoch himself makes clear, it is shocking to realise that as a result of spending twice as much of their GDP on health care as we in the UK do the US only manage to produce an average result the same as the worst in the whole of England.
That is not just staggering: it shows how dire Tory thinking on health is. And it shows us that the only way to deliver the healthcare we need is via a state-owned and funded NHS.
There is only one way to fund the future of healthcare, and it is to restore the NHS to the service levels we can very obviously afford because we had them only a decade or so ago.
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Whole heartedly agreed.
I heard on R4 this week that dissatisfaction with the health service by the public is at an all time high – delivered by the Bullingdon Broadcast Company (BBC) without any context at all in terms of budget cuts and failure to settle labour disputes. Slyly slipped in just like the Neo-lib fascists like to do.
The next thing I’m hearing is that life expectancy has dropped and someone saying that the Tory plan therefore to raise the retirement age to 68 was ‘not acceptable’.
I saw the report.
They didn’t -or didn’t report -who those surveyed blamed for the situation.
A wonderful piece of analysis and an insight full of purpose, poise and credibility. You really are ready to take the political centre stage.
What is the life expectancy of a CEO of an American private healthcare company I wonder?
Absolutely agree with most of your reported analysis and conclusion but have to quibble with the last remark: “restore the NHS to the service levels we can very obviously afford because we had them only a decade or so ago.”
It /will/ cost us more than decade ago, largely because we have an ageing population that is going to demand/need more healthcare. We also have available better but more expensive healthcare measures that we would like to use, because lack of investment in preventative measures such as clamping down on the food industry and increasing the income of the lower income deciles to enable eating more healthily (vide the continued increase in obesity and diabetes in the population) and obviously because we are underpaying our healthcare workforce.
I was going to say we should restore out healthcare spend to similar levels to our European neighbours but having checked our spend is actually comparable (see https://www.statista.com/statistics/428309/healthcare-expenditure-as-a-share-of-gdp-in-selected-oecd-countries/) and many of those those countries also have proportionally as many over 65 as we do.
Needless to say I think this is still something that we should invest more on.
Good point
Can’t see the Statistica statistics unless I pay $39.
Sorry I didn’t realise it was paywalled – I use the Firefox extension “Bypass Paywalls Clean” and this was the first relevant source my DDG search turned up.
Try this instead:
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/860615c9-en/images/images/05-chapter5/media/image4.png
To Majorie R
The only reason the statistics show the Uk spends at comparable levels to the best in Europe is that the latest figures include a lot of exceptional wasted COVID expenditure they didn’t need to do in Europe. £60- 90bn depending which way you look at it.
Plus the NHS already spends a lot on prevention.
The NHS just needs to train more doctors and nurses and avoid going down the accountable care route.
But politicians dont want to hear that. The treasury knows it will cost more in the short term and politicians and political parties are being lobbied/paid by the american accountable care industry to believe in magical solutions.
Quick question for clarification: do John Burn-Murdoch’s data relate solely to England or is there conflation of England with the whole UK (the 3rd graph above cites both “England” and “British”)? It’s a conflation that occurs constantly in the UK media to the confusion and annoyance of the peoples of the devolved nations.
I believe it is English data
But dime data sets are also published in aggregate
We have an ageing population BECAUSE we have a better healthcare system. You can’t blame people getting older for the state of the health service.
If you go down that road you have to decide what age you want us to be when we die. My husband died when he was 65.
https://weownit.org.uk/blog/campaigners-march-against-deaths-due-nhs-privatisation
Agreed
And so sorry
I’m fairly sure those who own and profit from health-care companies, be they here or the US, are aware of this data.
The bonus is that the dead collect no pensions.
Their obvious target is to raise the pension age to equal the average age at death, thereby raising profits for the pension companies.
The health companies will have extracted maximum profit already from the overworked elderly.
What’s not to like for a Tory?
Richard, thanks for all that you do. Over the last few years of me reading your blog, you’ve made things I would previously believed impenetrable much simpler for me to understand and, as in this post, you draw our collective attention to crucial matters which I’m not sure anyone else is in a position to do. We are all in your debt, sir.
Thanks
It was an excellent article. For me the arguments in favour of the NHS (against a private system) – particularly is we choose to fund it properly – are clear and unanswerable.
However, the key take away was not about “private versus public” healthcare it was that shorter life expectancy was due deaths among the young. The data showed that if you made it to 75 then your life expectancy in the US was bang in line with Europe… and that the US “whole population averages” were lower due to high death rates among the young from violence, dangerous driving, drug overdoses etc..
What is shocking to me is that there is no among US politicians to tackle these problems. I suspect they are not due to health finance models but more deep seated issues about Race, Inequality, Poverty etc.
The young are also uninsured in the USA
Thank you for a superb commentary on the differences between the NHS and the US health systems. Despite living in the USA for 13 years, I had no idea that the US system was so bad, probably because I had a very comprehensive private health care cover from my employer.
Not all Americans are covered by a health-care plan, because they are so expensive. I wonder what the data would look like if only the best private health plan members were included. For instance, many members of Congress reach very ripe old ages. If you have to pay for your health care then the poorer you are the sooner you will die.
I think that is in the tweet thread