COVID-19 UK Political Analysis by Tim Hames – 15th May 2020

“Protect the NHS” has been one of the most consistent messages of the coronavirus crisis. It also appears to have been extremely effective. The public has all but universally accepted its importance. In many ways, though, it is a strange slogan. Why should a health system require “protecting” from potential and prospective patients? Should not the “protection” element be the other way around?

Yet, protecting the NHS has been more than a set of words; it has been the central aspect of policy throughout the past several weeks and it has had a prominence that does not seem to be the case in other countries. This edition of the FTI UK Political Analysis will deploy a painstakingly compiled (by me) collection of data involving sixteen different countries, drawn almost entirely from various OECD publications, and segmented into three “control groups” to outline why the NHS has been especially exposed in this crisis compared with other systems internationally and from there will outline what is the likely long-term impact on health spending in the UK and how taxes might rise to finance this.