IEA - NHS long-term plan falls short of offering real solutions to improve patient outcomes

8 Jan 2019 09:32 AM

IEA reacts to launch of NHS long-term plan

“This long-term strategy for improving the National Health Service seems to be a well-disguised effort to kick the can down the road, pouring vast sums of taxpayer money into a broken system that has become an international laggard amongst the developed world. 

“Far from undergoing a transformative reboot, the NHS is to remain an extremely centralised system that allows for minimal competition or patient choice. And while improving survival rates for serious conditions has been put at the forefront of this new strategy, it seems no consideration has been given to learning from the Social Health Insurance systems in Europe, under which thousands more people survive strokes and common types of cancer each year.

“The systematic problems facing the NHS have not been properly addressed. Indeed, this helps to explain why the (unfunded) extra £20.5 billion pledged to it annually by 2023-24 is only projected to keep it afloat.

“A long-term strategy for improving its structure and patient outcomes on the NHS can’t come soon enough – unfortunately, that is not what is being delivered by the Government.”

Notes to Editors

For media enquiries please contact Nerissa Chesterfield, Head of Communications: nchesterfield@iea.org.uk 020 7799 8920 or 07791 390 268

For IEA research on the National Health Service, click here.

The mission of the Institute of Economic Affairs is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems and seeks to provide analysis in order to improve the public understanding of economics.

The IEA is a registered educational charity and independent of all political parties.

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