Letter

Who’s the biggest public spender?

Dear healthmatters — As a Labour Party supporter and a supporter of the NHS I have often used the argument (which I belive to be basically sound) that the Tories have consistently underfunded our health service, as can be shown by matching UK spending on health as a proportion of GDP with that of other western nations.

On first reading the figures you cite in the article Through the mill of Dutch health care reform (issue 17) support the GDP argument - ie, in 1993 the UK spent 6.1 per cent and the Netherlands 7.9 per cent of GDP on health.

But I was very disconcerted when I noticed how much the Dutch spending on health is attributable to the private sector — 28 per cent compared with 15 per cent in the UK. The figure is almost double.

Does the fact that a country spends more money privately automatically account for the fact that they spend more of their GDP on health?

Could healthmatters or anybody else solve this worrying accounting exercise?