The Financial Crisis: What Affect Did It Have On People’s Health?
You don’t normally think about money affecting health- not directly, anyway. In the UK, we don’t have to worry too much about our healthcare since we have the NHS and all of our treatments and hospital care is for free, unlike in many other countries where you need to build up good medical insurance.
So you would think that good care would have continued in spite of a financial crisis, right? Wrong!
During the financial crisis, and to some extent in recent years too, there were constraints for all companies, the NHS included. This meant that lots of tough decisions needed to be made around what the NHS could afford to pay if they wanted to avoid long waiting lists, poorer care and greater costs. During the recession, a 15 billion pound budget shortfall was expected (which means they had access to £15 billion pounds less than they had budgeted for). That’s a massive amount!
And it of course meant that they needed to cut jobs to save money, which impacted on medical care and services.
There were lots of others ways it affected health too:
- It had a massive effect on mental health and suicide rates. Lots of people lost their jobs and their homes, which lead to an increase in stress and depression. It is estimated that there were possible 30- 40,000 additional suicide attempts during the recession period. (Source: http://www.awp.nhs.uk/media/757861/policyreport-3-suicide-recession.pdf)
- It affected nutrition, as many people could not afford to sustain the diets they had previously.
- Alcoholism also increased as an impact of stress and anxiety.
There is still a lot of talk about the NHS being in debt. Do you think this is as a result of the 2008 financial crisis or are there other reasons?
Comments (15)
30 Nov 2018
I'm pleased that the financial crisis has got you thinking about a different but interconnected issue and I can see you have been curious about this and done your research. Well done!
30 Nov 2018
just read it and i have to say please write more that is how good it is
01 Dec 2018
Wow I've learned a lot of detailed facts that I didn't even know I didn't know that the financial crisis affected peoples health very good key information.
01 Dec 2018
I meant did you use any other sources ?
02 Dec 2018
I love how your thinking other ways than just physical health
03 Dec 2018
Wow! This really helped! Good job on this work!
04 Dec 2018
I love how your going out your way to do some great research. Well done!
04 Dec 2018
I really like how you wrote this
post because you add a lot of information that explains what
is happening.
06 Dec 2018
it affected national heath because the NHS and the hospitals lost money
10 Dec 2018
I think that the 2008 financial crisis has had an effect on the NHS and healthcare around the world because if the NHS cannot afford the research to find medication for diseases, then more people will die. Also, it has had an effect on other people who had lost their jobs to save money as they have developed a mental health issue.
11 Dec 2018
I think that was a very useful post.
14 Dec 2018
The financial crisis had an impact on everyone because ,most people store money In banks and the money in the banks are all lost because banks will have to close down . This is extremely unhelpful because there is no place to store money. Also money looses its value because it is being printed so much in one day that it looses its worth.
14 Dec 2018
I think that its having a huge effect on our health because the NHS need more supplies to supplies for the hospitals so then we can't be cured or fixed because the NHS don't have the supplies to make us better.
14 Dec 2018
the effects on people who are suffering from losing money which could have been savings for medicals.
17 Dec 2018
Great post! I thought it was really interesting. In answer to your question, I think that it is the fault of the financial crisis because when the banks failed, the government had to bail them out using money from taxes that would have gone to the NHS and schools etc. But it could have been something else as well.
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