What's sick is NHS denying treatment forcing people to take their sick children out if the country.
And it's coming to europe, a little quicker every day.
From FT
Rising healthcare costs put countries at risk
Rising spending on healthcare will jeopardise the creditworthiness of leading industrialised countries by the middle of this decade unless reforms are enacted to stem the costs, according to Standard & Poor’s.
Healthcare spending in a number of advanced economies will almost double as a proportion of gross domestic product over the next 40 years without action to curb expenditure, according to the rating agency.
The findings underline the challenges facing fiscally stretched nations as they seek to reduce demands on public expenditure.
Highlighting Germany, the US, the UK and France, it said: “We project that healthcare costs for a typical advanced economy will stand at 11.1 per cent of GDP by 2050, up from 6.3 per cent of GDP in 2010.”
The report, published on Tuesday, warns that advanced economies, particularly in Europe, may have “only narrow room for manoeuvre” in managing health spending, compared with emerging economies “where demographics and economic growth are still slightly more favourable”.
However, S&P says its analysis suggests “that the need in some emerging market sovereigns to address demographically-driven budgetary challenges is hardly less pressing than in some advanced economies.”
The report emphasises that longer lives are only part of the explanation for the increasing pressure on healthcare services. Nondemographic factors, such as the costs of technological advances and more generous healthcare coverage, have played a significant, but under-appreciated, part in the rise in expenditure.
S&P says that while pensions look set to remain the biggest item in the budgets of the G20 group of leading nations, it is healthcare spending that represents the majority of the total increase in age-related spending in more than half of those economies.
Marko Mrsnik, who led the analysis, said the bleakest scenarios may not materialise. A combination of budgetary consolidation and systemic reform of pensions and healthcare, as well as rising economic growth, “is something that will hopefully happen over the coming years”, he said.
However, he highlighted the opposition to pension reforms in some countries, exemplified by last year’s defeated referendum on the issue in Slovenia. That experience pointed to the need to get health reform under way soon so that it could be part of a gradual process less likely to stimulate opposition, Mr Mrsnik said.
Richard Saltman, associate head of research policy at the European Observatory of health systems and policies, and professor of public health at Emory University in the US, said a key theme internationally, as governments sought to curtail healthcare costs, would be “rethinking the balance between collective and individual responsibility”.
A “contentious discussion” was in prospect in many countries about how far people should be expected to take charge of maintaining their own health, he said.
