Major analysis of NHS reveals nearly 12,000 unnecessary deaths a year

The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) can today reveal that nearly 12,000 fewer people would die each year if the NHS matched standards in Europe.

Click here to read the full report


Click here for the complete press release


[iframe http://www.youtube.com/embed/fF03yKDEn1U 485 304]

A major new report from the campaign group, using data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and applying a method pioneered in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), exposes how the huge increase in healthcare spending since 1999 has had no discernable effect on mortality rates.

Wasting Lives is a statistical analysis of WHO mortality data to estimate the number of deaths that could plausibly have been averted by the NHS since the 1980s.  The measure used is known as “mortality amenable to healthcare”.

The report compares NHS performance with that of three other European countries: the Netherlands, France and Spain. Health expert Nick Bosanquet has written the forward to the report, he is Professor of Health Policy at Imperial College London and Chairman of Volterra Health; and was Special Advisor on public spending to the Commons Health Committee from 2001 to 2010.

Click here to read the full report


Click here for the complete press release


Key findings:

  • In 2008, the latest year for which data is available, 11,749 more deaths occurred in the UK than would have if the UK had matched the average mortality rates in European peers

  • This is more than four times the total number of deaths from road accidents in 2008. It is equivalent to over 2,000 more deaths than those related to alcohol in 2008

  • The UK has caught up with its European peers at a nearly constant rate between 1981 and 2008. In that time there has been a huge increase in spending on healthcare since 1999. This suggests that money alone has no discernable effect on mortality rates

  • In the last two years studied (2007-2008) the UK‘s amenable mortality convergence relative to European peers was slower than the trend over the entire period. This suggests that relative improvements in mortality amenable to healthcare could be slowing


The TPA is also releasing a video to coincide with the publication of Wasting Lives. The aim is to provide a quick, visual guide to what the report is about.

Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:

“Thousands are dying every year thanks to Britain’s health service not delivering the standards people expect and receive in other European countries.  Billions of pounds have been thrown at the NHS but the additional spending has made no discernable difference to the long-term pattern of falling mortality.  This is a colossal waste of lives and money.  We need to learn lessons from European countries with healthcare systems that don’t suffer from the same degree of political management, monopolistic provision and centralisation.”The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) can today reveal that nearly 12,000 fewer people would die each year if the NHS matched standards in Europe.

Click here to read the full report


Click here for the complete press release


[iframe http://www.youtube.com/embed/fF03yKDEn1U 485 304]

A major new report from the campaign group, using data from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and applying a method pioneered in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), exposes how the huge increase in healthcare spending since 1999 has had no discernable effect on mortality rates.

Wasting Lives is a statistical analysis of WHO mortality data to estimate the number of deaths that could plausibly have been averted by the NHS since the 1980s.  The measure used is known as “mortality amenable to healthcare”.

The report compares NHS performance with that of three other European countries: the Netherlands, France and Spain. Health expert Nick Bosanquet has written the forward to the report, he is Professor of Health Policy at Imperial College London and Chairman of Volterra Health; and was Special Advisor on public spending to the Commons Health Committee from 2001 to 2010.

Click here to read the full report


Click here for the complete press release


Key findings:

  • In 2008, the latest year for which data is available, 11,749 more deaths occurred in the UK than would have if the UK had matched the average mortality rates in European peers

  • This is more than four times the total number of deaths from road accidents in 2008. It is equivalent to over 2,000 more deaths than those related to alcohol in 2008

  • The UK has caught up with its European peers at a nearly constant rate between 1981 and 2008. In that time there has been a huge increase in spending on healthcare since 1999. This suggests that money alone has no discernable effect on mortality rates

  • In the last two years studied (2007-2008) the UK‘s amenable mortality convergence relative to European peers was slower than the trend over the entire period. This suggests that relative improvements in mortality amenable to healthcare could be slowing


The TPA is also releasing a video to coincide with the publication of Wasting Lives. The aim is to provide a quick, visual guide to what the report is about.

Matthew Sinclair, Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance, said:

“Thousands are dying every year thanks to Britain’s health service not delivering the standards people expect and receive in other European countries.  Billions of pounds have been thrown at the NHS but the additional spending has made no discernable difference to the long-term pattern of falling mortality.  This is a colossal waste of lives and money.  We need to learn lessons from European countries with healthcare systems that don’t suffer from the same degree of political management, monopolistic provision and centralisation.”
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