EmailIn a report to members of the Scottish Parliament, Professor David Bell says that NHS Scotland could save £300m annually through charging patients for health services.
The report, a response to the independent budget review, says that Scotland should look closely at the Swedish healthcare model, whereby patients are required to provide a small contribution to costs every time they use a healthcare service.
"While Sweden's public services are usually thought of as exemplars of universal provision, it is not generally known that the provision of services is more competitive than in Scotland and that, for example, user charges provide around 3% of the health budget," he says in the paper, published on 9 September 2010.
Bell, of Stirling University, also criticises the ring fencing of NHS budgets. "Scotland already spends 10% per head more than England on healthcare and has not seen the improvements in health outcomes that have been observed south of the border during the last ten years," he writes.
"There are few external commentators who believe that there are no significant improvements in efficiency that could be made in NHS Scotland within its existing resources."
The Scottish government said that it has no plans to implement the ideas put forward by Bell. "We are completely opposed to the idea of charges for NHS services, as we firmly believe Scotland's health service must remain free for all our citizens at the point of need," said a spokesperson for finance secretary John Swinney.
"The only credible alternative to a decade of dismal Westminster cuts is for Scotland to have the economic powers and financial responsibility which will give us the tools to allow us to boost economic growth and generate additional tax revenues to invest in quality public services."
The spokesperson added that the government won't know "just how bad the Westminster cuts to Scotland's budget are" until next month when UK chancellor George Osborne announces the results of his spending review.
;
Comments