The National Health Service in the UK is markedly inexpensive by international standards. The only advanced system that is markedly cheaper is Singapore’s, which uses an organisational and financing structure that no one else does (although arguably more should).
An interesting little point being made today about how that relative cheapness of the NHS comes about. Roughly speaking, roughly because this data isn’t upgraded all that often, numbers are not entirely comparable and countries do change policies at times, the NHS costs 9-10% of the UK’s GDP, the French system costs 11-12% of their and the US system perhaps 17-18% of US GDP.
A lack of treatment or insufficient treatment is contributing to 14,000 deaths a year in people over the age of 75, Macmillan Cancer Support has found, in what it called an ‘unacceptable act of discrimination’.
To give you an idea of what this means that’s just under 3% or so of all deaths in a year.
According to research published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, there would be 14,000 fewer deaths from cancer in those aged over 75 per year if if mortality rates from cancer matched those in America.
It’s often pointed out that the US health care system spends 50% of its money on the last 6 months of a patient’s life. Seems reasonably logical really, given that death does come to most as a result of an illness that needs treatment.
The NHS seems to have a more robust attitude towards triage for treatment. It’s very definitely true that certain treatments don’t get approved on the grounds of cost, we’ve even got an official body, NICE, which does the calculations for us (in general, if a treatment costs more than £30,000 per quality adjusted life year that it provides then the NHS will not provide it).
The point being made today is just that this attitude is more prevalent than some might think. Cancers that in other countries might be aggressively treated are, at times, in the NHS rather ignored and the preparations for palliative care made instead.
Perhaps all this makes sense: we do all die after all and there’s little point in spending everything possible on striving officiously to keep alive. On the other hand it does reveal a little bit of the secret about why the NHS is, relatively, so cheap. It’s easy to save money if you don’t treat certain people.