THE COST OF THE NHS

The cost of the NHS Dental Budget is c £3.4 billion annually with private dentistry adding a further £3 billion.

The latest reality check on NHS costs comes from the Nuffield Trust (9) that unsurprisingly has difficulty in quantifying the additional budget cost of the Covid-19 Pandemic that some estimate at +£500 billion. The latest NHS spending budget for England is stated to be £193 billion (13) in the absence of the massive one-off Covid costs. The treatment costs of the Waiting List backlog will be enough to impact directly on the standard of living of everybody in the UK at a time of potential extreme economic hardship. In terms of the personal funding 30.3 million Taxpayers will have to foot the current NHS bill at + £6,000 per head annually with a further significant increase in the not too distant future. Efficiency savings budgeted at 4% in 2015 turned out to amount to less than 1%. We are looking into a future unlimited NHS Budget cost which will prove unsustainable in the absence of  radical change in the near future.

The latest Nuffield Trust Report states the situation “would imply cash cuts to spending per patient at a time when NHS staff have been exhausted and when recruitment and retention trends look perilous.” How can Hospital Waiting Lists be cleared without the necessary facilities and properly qualified staff? Even the Covid-19 vaccine rollout depended on unqualified staffing support.