Worshipping the NHS
Yesterday on the Today programme we heard a former Secretary of State say that the UK spends around the same on health as other countries, but has worse outcomes, fewer doctors and nurses.
But the facts are that UK healthcare spending per person is £2.9k a year and is the second-lowest in G7 with the highest spenders being France £3.7k, Germany £4.4k and the US £7.7k.
You can leave the US out of the calculations as they have a massively expensive and inefficient health sector, apparently designed to make insurance companies very, very rich.
But if you want a health service with the capacity and quality of similar nations then the UK needs to increase health spending by around 1/4 to 1/3, permanently. Think how many more doctors and nurses you would get for that money.
You can witter on about efficiencies, red tape, bad management and waste all you want but the NHS is obviously under funded and has been for years.
If you spend decades telling people you can have European style government services with American style taxes, this is what you get.
The UK worships low taxation more than the NHS, but will never admit it.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.