Spending more money on NHS will solve its problems – False

In fact, there is a chasm between current political rhetoric – the need to increase staff numbers, spending tens of millions on making it easier to see your GP, reducing hospital car parking charges – and the reality of the financial situation facing the NHS. To avoid the sort of measures seen in Ireland and elsewhere, additional money will be needed.

Billions will be wasted as long as the health service is hyper-centralised and disconnected from local authorities, says Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins

NHS England estimates that during 2023-24, 350,000 more treatments would have been started if there had been no industrial action. But even that leaves hospitals well short of what you would have expected, if treatments had gone up by as much ...

Extra funding for Scotland's NHS has not yet translated into a significant increase in delivery for patients, a leading think tank has said.

Even during years of deep austerity in the UK, extra money has been found for the health service - £8bn more this parliament in England alone. Yet it seems no matter how much is invested, it's still not enough. The NHS is creaking at the seams. The best barometer of this is the four-hour A&E target. We often think of it as an indication of how good an emergency department is. But it's not. It doesn't tell you about the quality of care - how quickly you get pain relief or whether the unit is good at spotting the signs of a heart attack. Instead it's a sign of whether the system is under stress - both in the community and in the hospital.

Eine beispiellose Streikwelle im britischen Gesundheitsdienst NHS hat Folgen: Die Regierung hat sich mit den Gewerkschaften im Tarifstreit geeinigt. Mehr als eine Million Mitarbeiter in England würden eine deutliche Lohnerhöhung erhalten, ...

Denis Campbell, »The Guardian« »Die Menschen fangen an, NHS-Versorgung zu umgehen und ihr eigenes Geld für private Gesundheitsdienste auszugeben, insbesondere für nicht dringende Operationen. Die Menschen wissen also, dass sich der NHS in einer noch nie dagewesenen Krise befindet, und das löst enorme Ängste und Sorgen aus.«

Das reicht aber nicht aus, um mit dem Bedarf mitzuhalten. "Die Kernursache für die gegenwärtige Krise ist, dass die Regierung zu wenig Geld für den NHS bereitstellt", sagt Anna Lawin-O'Brien.

Annual spending on the NHS has increased on average by around 3.4% in real terms, but budgets have not increased smoothly from year to year (fig 1). Annual increases averaged 6.2% over the decade from 2000 to 2010 but just 1.2% between 2010 and 2020. This represents a significant financial ...

Most of this budget will be allocated to the NHS, whose funding will see 3% average real-terms growth over 2025/26-2028/29 – an increase from £195.6bn in 2025/26 to £226bn in 2028/29.

Yet, repeated attempts by the government to reform and reorganise the service have failed to “fix” the problems it faces. Recent evidence highlights significant challenges regarding governance, accountability and decision-making arrangements within the NHS...

Alongside this, there has been a national failure to address long-term challenges, even when the need for a long-term approach has been widely agreed. The issue of social care is a prime example. The damaging consequences of a short-term, Treasury-centred mindset have also diverted attention away from systemic, long-term change. The first module report of the UK COVID-19 Inquiry (PDF) reinforced the view of an NHS lacking resilience and preparedness: “This Report concludes that, in reality, the UK was ill prepared for dealing with a catastrophic emergency, let alone the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic that actually struck.”