IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/gpprii/v33y2008i4p744-767.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Cost Incidence of the U.K.'s NHS System

Author

Listed:
  • Paul J M Klumpes

    (Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London, South Kensington SW72AZ, U.K)

  • Liyan Tang

    (Tanaka Business School, Imperial College London, South Kensington SW72AZ, U.K)

Abstract

We examine the cost incidence of the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS) through application of the concepts of fiscal imbalance (FI) and generational imbalance (GI). We find significant disparities of costs by gender, region and type of NHS expenditure. The financial sustainability of publicly funded health care systems is sensitive to the demographics of ageing population. Historical and current trends in the demographic structure of U.K.'s population also impact these structural imbalances underlying the system. The pay-as-you-go (PAYG) financed funding status of NHS based on both currently required cash-based accounting principles and proposed accrual-based accounting principles is criticised for not recognising the continuing service obligations of the U.K. Government under the NHS. A combination of FI and GI largely explains the under-funding of the NHS. Data are taken from both historical trends in expenditure and ageing as well as projected demographics. The analysis implies that there is a significant inter-generational inequity in the funding of the NHS. The Geneva Papers (2008) 33, 744–767. doi:10.1057/gpp.2008.29

Suggested Citation

  • Paul J M Klumpes & Liyan Tang, 2008. "The Cost Incidence of the U.K.'s NHS System," The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan;The Geneva Association, vol. 33(4), pages 744-767, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:gpprii:v:33:y:2008:i:4:p:744-767
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/gpp/journal/v33/n4/pdf/gpp200829a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/gpp/journal/v33/n4/full/gpp200829a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:gpprii:v:33:y:2008:i:4:p:744-767. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.