Filling the gap: Tax and fiscal options for a sustainable UK health and social care system

Filling the gap: Tax and fiscal options for a sustainable UK health and social care system The NHS and publicly funded adult social care will account for £157bn of public spending across the UK in 2015/16 – equivalent to 8.4% of gross domestic product (GDP) and accounting for around £1 in every £5 of government spending.

In this report, economists at the Health Foundation and the Institute for Public Policy Research have worked together to explore:

• how spending pressures on health and social care might increase
• the scope for public funding to match these pressures within current fiscal policy to quantify whether there is a potential funding gap for health and social care 
• the potential revenue that might be raised by different taxes to fill a health and social care funding gap 
• the distributional impact of the different tax options and how they compare to the profile of the ‘beneficiaries’ of additional health and social care spending.