Nearly half of Brits unsatisfied with UK healthcare, new ONS figures reveal

The NHS is celebrating its 75th anniversary this month. The UK’s healthcare system, which treats around 1.3 million people a day just in England, has been at the core of public health since 1948.

However, new government figures reveal just over half of Brits (53.9%) are happy with the UK’s health system and 9% fewer people are satisfied with their own health than when the survey started in 2010.

The UK Measures of National Well-being Dashboard from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), shows Brits feel their general wellbeing has declined in recent years. As the NHS celebrates a milestone, only half of the UK’s population are happy with the healthcare system. Furthermore, the percentage of UK adults who are mostly or completely satisfied with their health has declined 8.6% since the first such poll in 2010.

Meanwhile, reported evidence of depression or anxiety was 23.7% between 2020 and 2021, the highest it has been since 2009-2010.

Tim Vizard, from the ONS, said: “We have been exploring people’s wellbeing for over a decade now to understand how society is changing and what matters most to people.

“A lot has changed over the last 10 years, including most recently the coronavirus pandemic and increases to the cost of living. Today we have published new insights to reflect what matters to people across the UK.

“Measuring how we are doing as a society goes beyond economic measures and capturing this is a vital part of our work, looking beyond measures such as GDP.”

We wrote back in January about how an increasing number of Brits are resorting to medical treatment abroad amid long NHS waiting lists. The latest ONS figures provide further insights into why this may be the case.

*Image by Parentingupstream from Pixabay