Primary and social care funding must increase if the NHS is to recover

The NHS needs better funding. Almost every analysis of the current crisis indicates that the UK’s healthcare funding—relative to our peers in other high income nations—has resulted in fewer healthcare professionals per head of population, poor quality infrastructure, and scarcity of essential equipment, particularly magnetic resonance imaging scanners.123 Even the current chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt, while chair of the Health Select Committee, wrote “surely we need to find a longer term, more strategic approach to funding our health and social care system.”4 It is critical that investment isn’t directed only at the short term crisis, however politically attractive this might be.Would an injection of funds ensure sustainability for the UK healthcare system—or merely provide temporary respite before another inevitable crisis? Short term planning bedevils many political challenges including climate change, social care, and the long term health of the NHS. We need change and the more radical the…
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