The NHS is Europe's largest enterprise, with 1.3 million employees serving more than 57 million people. The 1996/7 NHS budget for England was ?33bn; in 2009 it had tripled to ?96bn, over 7% of UK GDP, and now stands at over ?1 lObn, approaching 9% of currerit estimated GDP If it were a commercial organisation its scale and turnover would place it in the top 50 of the Fortune 500 global businesses.In spending terms, the current government has more than fulfilled its pledge to fully resource the NHS. Few would disagree that the NHS has been periodically underfunded since its establishment in 1948, but it has also become structurally incoherent, largely as a result of internal market initiatives, accompanied by several reorganisations during the late 1980s and 1990s.
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