NHS spending ‘will have to be cut’

NHS spending ‘will have to be cut’

The National Health System (NHS) in Scotland will be under pressure in the next few years not only because they have to freeze current levels of spending but also to impose real cuts in services. The Scottish NHS could face making more cut-backs than its counterpart in England as the impact of the recession on the UK deficit continues. In a report, written for the IFF by Dr Margaret Hannah, a consultant in Public Health Medicine and currently deputy director of public health in NHS fife, she paints a bleak picture of the financial prospects for the NHS on both sides of the border. It contends that without radical innovation in the way health services are delivered in the UK, the NHS is “in a state of terminal collapse”. Dr Hannah comments: “This inevitable rise in spending would come as a surprise to the founding fathers of the NHS. They never would have thought it would end up costing the taxpayer so much. They thought that once immediate health concerns were addressed, initial increases in funding for the NHS would level off at a steady state.” However the actual consequence may well be described as dramatic, compulsory, permanent cuts in services as that reality begins to sink in, two or three years from now. Dr Hannah indicates that without radical improvement in the spending rate of the NHS, this could possibly turn into a system in a state of terminal collapse.

Source: Retrieved June 8th, 2010
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article7145514.ece

My reaction:
To my belief a country can not manage to function properly without a working healthcare system. I would say pay those extra taxes to increase funding for the NHS because I figure the UK does not want to end like the USA paying thousands of Pounds for healthcare that can be managed the way it is done now. Even if this means more workload for doctors and nurses, paying extra for medicine and investing in new technology then that will just have to be done. To my opinion if the high heads in the House of Parliaments would increase the medicine cost from the now £ 7,20 per recipe to £ 10 it would increase the income for NHS increasingly, but that is just my opinion.