More money into the medical sector: is this the answer?

Abstract

This paper questions the conventional assumption that additional resources are the best way of improving the quality of care provided under a nation's health service. It also challenges the proposition that some diseases will always remain simply too expensive to treat. It is pointed out that the proportion of health care concerned with life and death situations is extremely small, and that the total needs related with these aspects of medical care are quite limited. Extensive evidence is quoted to the effect that in other aspects of medical treatment, dealing with chronic progressive illness and with relatively trivial disease, there is substantial misuse of resources. This arises primarily because the present patterns of morbidity and of demand for medical care have not yet been fully appreciated. In addition, administrative inefficiency has added to the wasteful use of resources. The paper argues that it is only in the caring aspects of medicine, as opposed to its preventive and curative aspects, that the potential scope for improvement in quality of care is virtually unlimited.