AS/A Level Economics Question about NHS Heath Spending Please Help...?

Question

Here Goes...

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Health Spending

The rate of growth in NHS spending in England will increase over the next three years by 4% a year. This will mean the budget will rise from £900bn this year to £110bn in 2010.

Chancellor Alistair Darling said cash would fund 20 new hospitals, 140 new walk-in centres open 7 days a week, and 100 new GP Practices.

However, since 2002, the health service has enjoyed record yearly rises of over 7%. The period of record investment which ends this year saw the NHS budget grow annually by more then twice the average rate of the previous three decades prior to 1997. This lifted spending on the NHS close to the European average, as promised by former Prime Minister Tony Blair.

The new increases fall short of those recommended by former banker Sir Derek Wanless in his review of the future of the NHS. He recommended that the NHS budget increase by at least 4.4% for the four years from April 2008. However, a spokesperson for the NHS said 'a slow-down in the growth of funding should not damage patient care and the delivery of better services as the NHS has been planning for this slow-down.'

source: adapted from BBC news website 9th October 2007.

Questions

A: Identify five key categories of spending by the UK government.

B: Discuss wheter you think it is a good idea for the government to spend more on the NHS.

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Please Help - Best Answer gets 10 points!

Answer 1

A: Identify five key categories of spending by the UK government.

1. -Health budget to rise 4 pct per year to 110 bln stg in 2010 from 90 bln now

2.Education budget to rise to 74 bln stg in 2010, taking education spending to 5.6 pct share of national income

3. Counter terrorism budget will rise by 1 bln stg

4. Transport investment to double to 14.5 bln stg by 2010

5. Environment, Food and Rural Affairs budget to rise to 4 bln stg in 3 yrs to deal with climate change

-Overseas aid budget to rise to 9 bln stg by 2010

B. Spending more on national health services is a socialist-bias fashion in Europe and UK is under pressure to follow that - the US may soon follow. Public spending on health services is good if such spending creates competitive conditions for health care industry / market rather than subsidizing the costs of maintaining health by the citizens. The rich in any case do not depend on Govt. funded hospital/ medical services except when there is no alternative available. The greatest beneficiaries of the National Health Services run by Govts. all over the World are the politicians, the bureaucrats and the govt. employees. The cost of NHS is high because the efficiency of administration is low and private sector medicine and medical instrument suppliers take the advantage of inefficient large buyer of their products.

Producing more doctors, nurses, health administrators and para medical staff should be more important than creating hospitals in areas/ locations where private and charitable initiatives are strong in setting up hospitals.  Medical Research is another area where Govt. spending can help if done in collaboration with private sector.

Helping the disadvantaged and the poor in getting access to low cost minimum health care is important but this does not mean free national health services for all. Govt. must spend more on public health, public infrastrucutre for clean water, innoculation, health insurance etc.