Week 19, 2013: UK Healthcare Spending

Summary: The latest figures released by the Office for National Statistics show that spending on healthcare slowed considerably between 2009 and 2011. However, this does not appear to have had a negative effect on the mortality rate.

What does the chart show? The blue and red lines represent annual public and private spending on healthcare in the UK in billions of pounds, measured against the left hand axis. The grey bars represent the average of the male and female age-standardised mortality rates, or the number of people per 100,000 of the population that died each year, measured against the right hand axis.

Why is the chart interesting? Between 1997 and 2011, total spending on healthcare grew by an average of 7.1% each year. However, since 2009, that rate of growth has dropped to just 1.5%. The concern is that this might have had a negative impact on the falling mortality rates that the UK has experienced over that same period, but that does not appear to have been the case. In fact, between 2009 and 2011 the mortality rate fell faster than during any other period since 1997, and in 2011 reached the lowest rate on record.