UK health care cuts will lead to 100 additional deaths each day
By
Margot Miller
28 November 2017
All over the world, governments are slashing health care spending in the name of promoting “efficiency” and “cost savings,” on the grounds that there is “no money.” The reality, however, is that these cuts have as their direct outcome the early deaths of masses of people—collateral damage for the further enrichment of the financial oligarchy.
A study of the terrible impact of spending cuts of more than £100 billion in the UK alone, with the loss of more than 1 million jobs, provides an indication of the worldwide impact of the ongoing destruction of health care and essential services.
A joint report by Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the University of London (UCL) finds that savage cuts to the UK National Health Service (NHS) and Social Care provision could result in nearly 200,000 “excess” deaths by the end of 2020 in England.
“The effects of health and social care spending constraints on mortality in England: a time trend analysis,” published in the British Medical Journal, BMJOpen, estimates 45,000 extra deaths have occurred between 2009 and 2014 and predicts a further 152,141 deaths from 2015 to 2020—a staggering 100 a day.
The research links increasing mortality rates to the cuts to health and social care spending, first begun under a Labour government, then continued by successive Conservative governments to pay for the £1 trillion bailout of the banks after the 2008 global financial collapse.
“From 2001 to 2010,” it states, “the absolute number of deaths in England decreased by an average of 0.77% per year. From 2011 to 2014, the number of deaths increased by an average of 0.87% per year.”
Older people account for most additional…