THE PERFECT
HEALTH SYSTEM
Unfortunately, this doesn’t exist, otherwise we may have tried to replicate it by now. All health systems have their strengths and weaknesses, and many reflect the history, culture and values of their country.
All countries employ a mix of funding methods – direct/general taxation, employer/employee contributions/levies, plus a variety of top-ups which range from compulsory insurance, voluntary insurance, co-payments by individuals, user charges. Britain relies very largely on taxation alone.
How we compare
Consequently, countries we’d typically be compared with do spend more than us. Looking at spend per head of population figures (OECD 2016 data), the differences in percentage terms are shown in the chart below.
We believe the creation of a health funding top-up - ‘HEALTH FUND’ - would allow the British to protect, strengthen and retain what we value most about the NHS, reinforcing the UK’s preferred model – a publicly owned, publicly funded, single/dominant payer system, free at the point of use.
The NHS has increasingly contracted with the independent sector to meet demand. Numerous commentators fear the growth in this activity has created additional complexity, fragmentation, workload and cost. In time, as our health system expands, and some treatment is diverted via the top-up, our aim is that the NHS will be able to reduce its reliance on this activity, redirecting resources and money solely towards delivering front-line care.
“One of the reasons that we spend less than most other countries is that we spend less through the private sector than most other countries... so we also need to think about whether we’ve got the right balance between an entirely publicly funded health service and some top-ups, which actually a lot of other countries do use.”