If I had to summarise the NHS in two numbers, they would be 27 and 18. The first – £27.5bn – is the liability for botched maternity care since 2019, when our world-beating health system has left women and infants crippled or dead. The second, £18bn, is roughly the amount the NHS spent on maternity services over the same period.
|  | The NHS is an international laughing stockWes Streeting knows Australia delivers better outcomes for less. Why reject a key plank of its health system? |
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Read through the documents the NHS provides, and you will find the usual bland statements about “avoidable errors” and “devastating consequences” for mothers, children, families and “the NHS staff involved”. Actual meaningful improvements are thin on the ground, with the Care Quality Commission rating two thirds of maternity units inspected as “requires improvement” or “inadequate” for safety.
Perhaps more in line with health service thinking is a 2018 appeal from the chief executive of the NHS confederation to cut compensation for clinical negligence.
It is an unfortunate observation that the scandal-ridden state of NHS maternity services isn’t particularly unusual: in every field of care, the incompetence of the health service is killing people who would otherwise have had a chance at living.
| | Streeting orders investigation into NHS maternity servicesHealth Secretary announces ‘rapid’ national review following succession of scandals |
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Over on social media, an appeal for Britons to share stories “about the time the NHS tried to kill you” has now been viewed 3.7 million times in around 36 hours. Heartbreaking lists of dead siblings, dead children, lost limbs and botched surgeries have come rolling in.
That almost everyone in Britain seems to have a story where the NHS has catastrophically screwed up their care, or the care of someone close to them, isn’t a strange coincidence. Hard numbers show that the NHS, to put it bluntly, is awful.
| | NHS tracker: The best and worst hospitals in the countryEvery hospital is facing unique levels of pressure. Use The Telegraph’s tool to see the best and worst hospital ... |
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Infant mortality rates are 16pc higher in Britain than in peer countries. Breast cancer survival rates are well behind average. Fatality rates for heart attacks and strokes are higher.
The UK’s treatable mortality rate – the rate of deaths which could have been averted with better healthcare – is 69 per 100,000 people, adjusted for age. The equivalent rate in Australia, to pick an example not entirely at random, is 46 per 100,000.
It would be tempting to say that this is a matter of NHS resources. The UK has fewer doctors for every 1,000 inhabitants (3.2) than the United States (3.6), Ireland (4.1) or Australia (4).
We also lag behind Bulgaria (4.9), Russia (3.8), and Kazakhstan (4) among many others. We also have fewer CT and MRI scanners – roughly one fifth the level of Australia – and fewer hospital beds.
But in financial terms, this wouldn’t quite be right. Adjusted for price levels, we spend considerably more per person than countries like Japan, Italy and New Zealand, while performing far worse in terms of treatable deaths. And when the NHS does get resources, it wastes them.
| | The NHS can’t be reformed. There is now no alternative but to bin itEver rising medical costs mean healthcare funded via general taxation will inevitably bankrupt Britain |
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Productivity in the health service has slumped back to its level in 2012, with all the technological gains since then swallowed by the sheer inability of the organisation to change and adapt.
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If I had to summarise the NHS in two numbers, they would be 27 and 18. The first – £27.5bn – is the liability for botched maternity care since 2019, when our world-beating health system has left women and infants crippled or dead. The second, £18bn, is roughly the amount the NHS spent on maternity services over the same period.
The NHS is an international laughing stock
Wes Streeting knows Australia delivers better outcomes for less. Why reject a key plank of its health system?
Perhaps more in line with health service thinking is a 2018 appeal from the chief executive of the NHS confederation to cut compensation for clinical negligence.
It is an unfortunate observation that the scandal-ridden state of NHS maternity services isn’t particularly unusual: in every field of care, the incompetence of the health service is killing people who would otherwise have had a chance at living.
Streeting orders investigation into NHS maternity services
Health Secretary announces ‘rapid’ national review following succession of scandals
That almost everyone in Britain seems to have a story where the NHS has catastrophically screwed up their care, or the care of someone close to them, isn’t a strange coincidence. Hard numbers show that the NHS, to put it bluntly, is awful.
NHS tracker: The best and worst hospitals in the country
Every hospital is facing unique levels of pressure. Use The Telegraph’s tool to see the best and worst hospital ...
But in financial terms, this wouldn’t quite be right. Adjusted for price levels, we spend considerably more per person than countries like Japan, Italy and New Zealand, while performing far worse in terms of treatable deaths. And when the NHS does get resources, it wastes them.
The NHS can’t be reformed. There is now no alternative but to bin it
Ever rising medical costs mean healthcare funded via general taxation will inevitably bankrupt Britain
NHS sends patients abroad after waiting lists hit record high
Health service paying for treatment in Poland and Lithuania
The Australian model is a hybrid. There is universal insurance in the form of Medicare, and there is private insurance purchased from the market. Healthcare providers are a mix of public and private.
High earners who don’t choose to buy an “appropriate level of private patient hospital cover” pay a tax surcharge of between 1pc and 1.5pc of their taxable income to encourage self-reliance. Far from following Lord Kinnock’s call for tax raids on private healthcare, there’s a system of tax rebates for those who take out policies.
The result is a system that provides excellent, convenient healthcare. Patients on the 7.4 million NHS waiting list have been on it for an average of 95 days. The average patient in Australia goes from diagnosis to surgery within 46 days. It works for patients, who get better outcomes. It works for doctors, who are voting with their feet.
Junior doctors, in particular, who face random allocation to training places and competition from overseas graduates, must be sorely tempted. And it certainly works for the taxpayer.
I can’t get a job as a doctor after seven years of training. It’s a wast...
Thousands of medics are struggling to find posts in the NHS – despite the urgent need for staff
In a UK context, it’s about £26bn a year: enough to cut roughly 4p off the basic rate of income tax, or cut your council tax bill by two thirds. Or, of course, it could close half of the £50bn black hole in the public finances that Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves may need to backfill by the autumn.
Healthcare is far from the only area where Britain has something to learn from its offspring. Australia has us whipped in living standards, government efficiency, taxation from income and fuel, pensions, and the rest.
Once we’ve dealt with health, we could do a lot worse than sending our own Iwakura Mission down under to learn from our cousins. But first things first: let’s kill the NHS before it kills us. DT.