Politics of health care in the UK
There won't be a snap election in the UK, but it will be interesting to see how the parties respond to this report by Health Consumer Powerhouse. It's bound to make NHS a bigger issue than it has been.UK falls further down European health league despite rise in funding
"Britain's National Health Service remains a 'mediocre' provider of healthcare, performing much less well than almost all of the UK's peers in western Europe, according to a European survey."The index of European health services, issued yesterday in Brussels by Health Consumer Powerhouse, found Britain had slid further down the European league table over the past year despite the investment in the NHS under New Labour. Of 29 countries assessed, the EU's 27 plus Norway and Switzerland, Britain came 17th.
"Apart from Italy, all the countries ranked worse than Britain were much poorer, mainly from eastern Europe...
"Austria came top of the survey, followed by The Netherlands and France. New and poorer EU member states such as Estonia, the Czech Republic and Cyprus were ranked higher than Britain.
"The analysis criticised Britain for long waiting times, the regional variations in supply of healthcare, the low rates of five-year cancer survival, and the scale of MRSA infection in NHS hospitals...
"Britain and Germany represent the two fundamental systems of public healthcare in Europe, with the British 'Beveridge' system unifying funding and provision, while the German 'Bismarck' system is based around a plethora of competing insurance organisations independent of health service suppliers. The survey found that the German model is delivering better results.
"'It is very hard to avoid noticing that the top five countries all have dedicated Bismarckian healthcare systems,' the report said. 'While not at all arguing that the Bismarck-type healthcare systems are in every way superior, it seems that for total customer value, the Bismarck model runs rings around Beveridge.'"
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:57 AM
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