Although its establishment in 1948 was controversial, history has looked kindly on Nai Bevan, Labour’s health secretary of the day, and the National Health Service (NHS) is one of the most popular and proudest achievements of Britain in the post-World War II years. The modern NHS is widely perceived to be strapped for cash, over-worked and (potentially) under-performing. Since the days of the Thatcher government, it seems to have been in a perpetual state of re-organisation without ever emerging into the sunny uplands. However, cradle-to-grave healthcare has become a birth right of the British people and in any election, serious parties from any part of the political spectrum are always at pains to promise that the NHS would thrive and survive under their administration.
Unsurprisingly, the NHS has become a battle ground in the UK-EU referendum debate. A main tenet of the various Leave campaigns is that the UK pays £55 million per day to be a member of the EU (after the rebate, it is £35 million) and that this money could be better spent on the NHS. EU membership works out at about £200 per person per day and the comparable NHS spend is a whopping £2000 per person per day (of course, the devil is in the detail). It is highly unlikely that even if the UK got exactly the same trading deal that it currently enjoys with the EU (and therefore that there was no economic fallout from leaving) that the government would pump all of this cash into the NHS. Brexit campaigners may think that such an idea would be compelling, but even if they got their way and the UK cut its EU ties, they have no compelling say in government, so it is a red herring at best.
The head of the NHS in England, Simon Stevens, has weighed into the debate on the remain side, noting: "It's been true for 68 years of NHS history that when the British economy sneezes, the NHS catches a cold and this would be a terrible moment for that to happen at precisely the time the NHS is going to need extra investment."
Much has been made by the Leave campaigns of the idea that unfettered migration to the UK by EU citizens would place an intolerable burden on the NHS. This is fallacious for at least two reasons: i) people migrating to the UK to work tend to be younger and healthy, so are in little need of the services that the NHS provides; ii) migrants working in the UK will contribute to the NHS via national insurance and tax payments (with the exception of the lowest skilled workers working for minimum wage).
It could therefore be argued that an influx of healthy European migrants would actually help bolster the NHS rather than act as a drain on it.