fernandopartridge
Well-Known Member
How does UK health spending compare across Europe over the past decade?
Icaro Rebolledo and Anita Charlesworth use five charts to compare UK health care spending with EU countries before the pandemic.
www.health.org.uk
Funding expenditure on day-to-day care
Looking at the decade prior to the pandemic, average total UK spending was £187bn per year (in current terms). How much would overall spending have changed if the UK had spent the same amount per person as other European countries?
Figure 2 shows that if UK spending per person had matched the average across the EU14 during the decade, then UK total spending per year would have averaged £227bn between 2010 and 2019 – £40bn higher than actual average annual spending. Matching spending per head to France or Germany would have led to an additional £40bn and £73bn (21% to 39% increase respectively) of total health spending each year.
The EU14 is on average a group of comparatively high-spending countries. The EU14 is above both overall EU27 spending and the OECD. But there are longstanding EU member countries with lower health spending than the UK – for instance, matching Spain’s spending per head would have resulted in UK spending being a fifth lower.