Government Intervention In Health Care Essay

In the United Kingdom, as with many other countries, the government plays a role in the provision of healthcare. This creates notable positive externalities, where ‘the social benefit of providing healthcare to an individual often exceeds the private benefit’ (SU, 2009). One of the justifications for government intervention is that healthcare is deemed to be a basic human need, since ‘an individual’s health is inextricably linked to his or her well-being’ (SU, 2009). This paper investigates the public expenditure programme on healthcare in the United Kingdom between 1997 and 2013.

In order to perform the roles assigned to it by its people, the government needs to collect resources from the economy and allocate and use those resources responsively,

The National Health Service is split into four areas who each receive a different allocation of funding. The four areas are NHS England, NHS Wales, NHS Scotland and NHS Northern Ireland. Since 1999, there has been increasing policy divergence between the four health systems that make up the NHS. There are four major differences between the four NHS services: average waiting times, amenable mortality, life expectancy and nurse staffing levels. Average waiting times are significantly higher in Wales than England, while amenable mortality is 20% higher in Scotland than England (Bevan et al., 2014). Life expectancy is expected to be one year shorter in Scotland than England, while nurse staffing levels are lower in England than in the other three countries (Bevan et al.,

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House of Commons (2014) Public Expenditure on Health and Social Care. [Online] Available from: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhealth/793/793.pdf [Accessed: 2nd March 2016]

Keynes, S. and Tetlow, G. (2014) Survey of Public Spending in the UK. [Online] Available from: http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/bns/BN43%20Public%20Spending%202014.pdf [Accessed: 29th February 2016]

Lewis, J. (2015) Expenditure of Healthcare in the UK: 2013. [Online] Available from: http://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthcaresystem/articles/expenditureonhealthcareintheuk/2015-03-26 [Accessed: 2nd March 2016]

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