Public healthcare cuts cause otherwise preventable deaths

We all witnessed the devastating effects of the 2008 economic crisis, as ordinary people lost their jobs and homes, and saw their hard-earned savings and financial security evaporate. Now a team of researchers are warning that the financial collapse may have also led to the preventable deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. With the NHS already facing enormous pressure and under threat from cuts from disingenuous politicking, this discovery doesn’t bode well for the UK. In a study published recently in The Lancet, researchers uncovered damning links between slashed public health spending, unemployment, and 160,000 cancer-related deaths in the EU alone in the fallout of the recession.

The team analysed data from the World Bank and World Health Organisation from 1990-2010 for almost 80 countries with different incomes and healthcare systems, accounting for over two billion people. They compared healthcare spending leading up to and following the recession with deaths from different types of ‘treatable’ and ‘untreatable’ cancers.Unemployment and funding cuts were markedly tied to increased cancer mortality, and countries without universal healthcare, like the United States, fared much worse.

“The US actually spends three times as much per person on healthcare than the UK, but the issue is that it doesn’t provide universal healthcare coverage…we found that between 2008 and 2010, the UK didn’t experience any additional deaths, whereas the US experienced around 18,000 additional cancer deaths – we believe – because of the economic crisis,” explained lead author Dr. Mahiben Maruthappu of Imperial College, Senior Fellow to the CEO of NHS and a practicing doctor.

Connections between healthcare availability and mortality might seem obvious to those of us who have experienced difficulties accessing adequate care or treatment. But previous studies in global ‘healthconomics’ have only looked at deaths related to higher levels of stress, like suicide and heart disease. This study is first of its kind to isolate cancer in this light.

Other researchers have been cynical of the study, and cautioned against over-generalisations. Dr. Eliana Barrenho, a health economist at Imperial College London, said using cancer rates as a health measure can produce distorted results because “the distribution of prevalence and mortality of these are not homogeneous across the globe… [and] richer countries with more access to health care have showed higher levels and degrees of cancer screening which, per se, might increase incidence”.

These concerns were echoed by Dr. Laurence Roope, a development economist at the University of Oxford. However, he did also say that the findings were still very plausible and “it’s obvious that access to good quality healthcare is what matters to whether or not people survive”.

Study authors acknowledged these limitations, arguing that these macroeconomic studies are not showing direct cause and effect. Rather, they hint at indirect but potentially lethal ripples in the wake of economic collapses.

As a result, scientists are keen to do more research about what has happened since 2010, considering the “effects of the economic crisis have been quite long-lasting and global unemployment remains significantly higher than before”, according to Maruthappu.

Still, it’s a compelling argument that universal healthcare actually protects human lives during tougher economic times, “because when you factor it in, the link between unemployment and cancer mortality disappears,” said Maruthappu.

If this study holds true, and future data shows that a lack of universal health care coverage does lead to cancer-related deaths that are otherwise preventable, government attempts to reduce NHS services and access is something British citizens will want to be wary of. The NHS may not be a perfect system, but in the face of pending economic uncertainty like that of Brexit, it may literally save our lives.