PERSPECTIVE
The UK NHS
How can the UK National Health Service be broke?
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Professor T Stephenson
Centre for Reproduction and Early Life, Academic Division of Child Health, School of Human Development, Queen’s Medical Centre, Nottingham NG7 2UH, UK; terence.stephenson@nottingham.ac.uk
Is the NHS today flabby and inefficient, or an organisation to be proud of, delivering healthcare free at the point of delivery?
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A colleague recently took me aside and said conspiratorially, "These NHS deficits—it’s not real money." Is it true that the National Health Service (NHS) has a deficit of £800 million, and if so, what does this mean for children’s healthcare in the UK?
In 1997, the NHS budget for England was £34 billion (US$63 billion and 
50 billion). By 2008, this will have reached £92 billion following the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s pledge of 7.4% growth year on year in real terms for five consecutive years.1 This has been possible thanks to a booming economy in the UK and low unemployment. Despite this, NHS Trusts are now having to institute draconian measures to balance the books, resorting to job losses and financial turn-around teams. With all this investment, how can the NHS be broke?
Of course, some of this new money has been swallowed up by added
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