Dear Editor
This article correctly identifies undercapacity as the underlying cause of NHS poor performance. Staff are working very hard but face a cruel lack of resources. As a result they become stressed and burnt out and threaten to strike.
However it is unlikley that the service lacks suffucient funding. In 2021 the government spent about 45% of it’s expenditure on healthcare. OECD defined private and public provided “Healthcare” (which includes some elements that we traditionally define as social care) absorbed about 12% of our GDP.
The number of hospital beds in the UK has halved in the past 30 years and this expenditure now only provides 1 hospital bed for about 400 people or 2.5 beds per 1000.
Germany spends a similar proportion of GDP on health (12.5%) but manages to pay for only one bed for every 130 people or 8 beds per 1000.
What on earth is going on?
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/…
Re: The steady crisis across the NHS