Greater public investment is needed to fund the NHS at a level considered normal in other high income countries

Health care is rarely far from the UK headlines, especially today, as junior doctors go on strike. The NHS’s failings are often highlighted prominently, its successes much less so. There is a constant stream of warnings that it is running out of money and thus unaffordable. Those who never liked a tax funded system, which provides care regardless of ability to pay, continue to claim that the UK is somehow unique (it isn’t – many other countries have a similar funding system) and that it will, at some time, be necessary to implement some other system, such as extensive patient charges.