NHS: Medical insurer claims greater spending will not improve evolving service
Extra investment promised for the NHS by 2010 will fail to make a material difference to the quality of service, an insurer has claimed.
Addressing delegates at the UK Independent Medicine conference, Julian Stainton, chief executive at WPA, said elements such as the ageing population, the introduction of expensive cancer and heart disease treatments, rising obesity and mounting staffing costs, would cancel out the effect of any increase in Government spending.
"Chancellor Gordon Brown's promise of greater spending will do no more than keep pace with the evolving needs of the NHS," said Stainton. "We will not see any improvement in the service, merely the ability to cope with the increased pressures on the NHS from cancer patients living longer, an older population, upsurges in medical negligence claims and the cost of generous pension schemes."
The Government has promised to almost double spending on healthcare from £67bn in 2004, to around £130bn by 2010. In his speech, Stainton focused on whether Prime Minister Tony Blair's pledge to improve the NHS to such an extent that there would no longer be a need for private healthcare, was actually achievable.
Stainton paid particular attention to the financial impact of the increase in the number of people over the age of 60 and the emergence of effective, but costly new drugs, on future NHS spending.
"Due to the ageing population, by 2024 there could be an extra 100,000 cancer cases in the UK each year," said Stainton. "The current cost of chemotherapy is £4,000 a year but cocktails of new palliative drugs that will be prescribed for several years may cost as much as £50,000 a year. If you include the cost of monoclonal antibodies, the extra cost due to cancer will be at least £15bn by 2011. With people over 65 accounting for 65% of all cancer cases, our aging society makes even this estimate a conservative one," he added.
Responding to Stainton's assessment, Paul Lynes, head of public affairs at Standard Life Healthcare, said: "The new investment will make some difference, but demand in the NHS is so high that I don't think the service will ever be able to meet it fully.
"The Government should look at healthcare funding in other countries such as Germany and France, where private healthcare plays a greater part in the total healthcare spend, and explore if we could adopt those models in this country," he concluded.
