Healthcare

Our social care system is the unfinished business of 1946 and the direct descendant of the poor law of 1834; the decision to fund it through a levy is a throwback to a time when we had a social insurance system. And that’s the trouble. If you want a rational system for tax, welfare and public spending, best not to start from here.

If history repeats itself, the ‘temporary’ increases in NHS funding announced this week could end up permanently swallowing up the money raised by the tax rise, leaving little available for social care.

This observation looks at how the numbers in England on the NHS waiting list changed before and during the pandemic and discusses the key factors that will affect how much they will grow in the near future.

Presentation to the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and Improvement as part of the Health and Social Care Workforce Policy Research Unit.

Presented "The Liquidity Sensitivity of Healthcare Consumption: Evidence from Social Security Payments" at Johannes Kepler University Linz.

Pay is an important lever in attracting and keeping staff, but is subject to tight regulations within the NHS. At this event, we explored the findings of new IFS work looking at the flexibility of the current pay system and its ability to address differences in the local cost of living across the country.

Hancock is just the latest in a very long line to grasp for that illusion of control. One day, probably in a decade or so, one of his successors will be so burnt by the experience of attempting to achieve the impossible that another re-disorganisation will be visited upon a system still doing its best to deliver that healthcare to us all.

We find that reductions in social care spending led to substantial increases in use of Accident & Emergency (A&E) departments by individuals aged 65 and above. The impacts were most pronounced among the very oldest (those aged 85 and above) and those living in more deprived neighbourhoods.