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Comment by gadders | Hacker News Reader

There haven't been any cuts. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthan...

Spending on the NHS is increasing a rate that is below the rate of increase in demand (the gap is about 3% year on year IIRC). Informally you might say this is a cut. It's easier to communicate to an unsophisticated audience.

I guess you can restate "cut" to suit your point. I'd even accept "cut" if it was less money in real terms (i.e. after inflation). But I don't think you can define "cut" as "not giving the NHS all the money it asks for, even though it got more than last year".

Spending is increasing at a slower rate than demand: https://nhsfunding.info/underfunded/is-the-nhs-underfunded/

You can pedantically argue whether this is a "cut" or not, but that's not the issue. Nor is the issue how much the NHS asks for. The issue is there is less money per health-care-incident to provide care.

Please at least read the pages you quote.

> this is likely to have been driven in part by activities in response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, such as testing and tracing services and the implementation of the vaccination programme.

Yes, if we include the many billions spent on faulty test and trace and broken PPE -the corrupt spending that went to pals of the Tory party- we see an increase in health spending.

Guess what happens to the amount of health care funding if you ignore the corrupt spend on PPE?

Even if you ignore 2020 and 2021, the trend-line is still upwards. There's no reason to think it would have dropped without COVID happening.

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