People in the UK are setting aside around £200 a year to pay for heath-related services, according to a report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
It highlighted the severity of the strain and underinvestment in the NHS with Britons expecting that they would now have to pay for some of their healthcare.
The report which sets out what individuals need to do to hit a minimum income standard, found a single person needs to earn £28,000 a year to reach a minimum acceptable standard of living in 2024, while a couple with two children need to earn £69,400 a year between them.
It found working-age households – both with and without children – identified a need for additional financial resources to meet health needs, reflecting the difficulty of accessing help via the NHS.
Groups added an additional healthcare budget of £200 a year per parent or working-age adult so that they could pay for health-related services – such as physiotherapy or counselling – if necessary until reaching the top of an NHS waiting list.
They acknowledged that it is becoming more difficult to obtain these services via the NHS, and even where it is possible, waiting lists are long.
The report also noted findings from an analysis by Gabert-Doyon and Quinio earlier this year showing that there had been a notable rise in healthcare borrowing – with UK households using credit packages to self-fund operations and diagnoses, in an attempt to mitigate the challenges of accessing healthcare via an increasingly stretched NHS.