SOURCES: INSTITUTE FOR FISCAL STUDIES, INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH, OECD
The NHS was a robust 60 year old, but it is decidedly frail as it notches up three score years and ten. It has endured the longest squeeze in its history. Budgets have crept up, but not fast enough to keep pace with the big pressures like ageing, and at only a fraction of the rate it has previously required. After the largesse of New Labour, the service initially coped on rations, but this is no longer so: waits are up, operations cancelled and winter is becoming an annual crisis.
Crunching the numbers in diff erent ways, two thinktanks—the IPPR and the IFS—both agree that to keep the show on the road, annual budget growth of something like 3.75 per cent will be needed. This tots up to roughly £12bn by the early 2020s, the precise sum depending on whether social care gets some of the cash. Whitehall is moving towards such a “birthday present,” and the IPPR proposes National Insurance hikes to foot the bill. But as the top chart shows, this bailout won’t last long; another on the same scale will be needed a few years on. But our malady isn’t unique. Other governments spend more, even those in places like the US where there is also a vast private sector.