We think this is gorgeous. No, really, an absolutely excellent, beautiful and gorgeous piece of research:
The UK spends more than anywhere else in Europe subsidising the cost of structural inequality in favour of the rich, according to an analysis of 23 OECD countries.
Well, it’s in The Guardian so it must be true. The report is from The Equality Trust. Yep, Wilkinson and Pickett of The Spirit Level. And some half or so of their costs are to do with health care and lifespans.
The UK’s healthy life expectancy was 70.1 years in 2019,5 ranking it 21st out of the 22 assessed countries.
We found that in a more equal UK, we could expect to live longer and healthier lives. If the UK were as equal as the average for the developed OECD countries, we would expect to live another: 12.8 months of healthy life. If the UK were as equal as the top five most equal developed OECD countries, we would expect to live another: 17.8 months. NICE guidelines indicate that the UK health system will pay £20,000-30,000 for a drug that increases healthy life expectancy (Quality Adjusted Life Year). This cost-effectiveness threshold hasn’t been uprated with inflation since 2004; research in mid 2021 found that the range should be increased to £28,584- £42,786, although this won’t take into account the rapid increase in inflation the UK has experienced since 2022. With that in mind, we’ve used the upper limit of £30,000 as our basis. Therefore, we estimate: The cost of inequality for physical health, compared to the average for the developed OECD countries, is: £34,337,869,367 yearly. The cost of inequality for physical health, compared to the top five most equal developed OECD countries, is: £47,751,099,588 yearly.
The five most equal countries are Finland, Belgium, Holland, Norway and Denmark. The links there are to descriptions of their health care systems. None of which is anywhere near as equal and equitable as our own NHS, Wonder of the World that it is. They are all also more efficacious than our more equal and equitable system.
Which is, we think, simply gorgeous of them. The place we’re more equal than them is in health care. That’s the entire driving ethos of the NHS itself. Equity. So, we die earlier, suffer problems longer, because equity, equality, and yet the blame is to be placed upon inequity, inequality?
No, no, you can’t get around it that way. They do not mention - even to dismiss it as a possible cause - the relative inefficiency of the NHS at actually treating people. That “mortality amenable to health care” measure the NHS has always done so badly at. Nope. It’s entirely inequality kills and the hell with whatever the health care system is.
Which is how they do manage to make this ludicrously absurd claim. That the poor performance of this very issue where we are most equal - health care through the NHS - is evidence of the costs of inequality.
At which point there’s really no possible answer other than guffaws of laughter, is there? Mere giggles just won’t do it at all.