A cutback in the size of New Zealand

Those everyday helpful comparators – a country the size of Wales, a double decker bus, Nelson’s Column – can get irritating. They can also be helpful & illuminating – one of my favourites is ‘a dispirin dissolved in an Olympic sized swimming pool’ to put something like environmental limits for water quality into context & make us suitably amazed by the power of modern methods of chemical analysis..

Now it has been reported that if the NHS were a country, its spending would total more than the entire GDP of New Zealand. It is also supposed to be the organisation with the largest number of employees of any other country in a Europe which includes Russia & its Red Army.

That puts things in perspective. It cannot sriously be planned & managed from the centre, even in an age when we expect no geographic variation (aka post code lottery) in the provision of services & prime ministers can make off the cuff management decisions such as all requests for appointment to be met within 48 hours.

Links
List of countries by GDP

NHS expenditure in England

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