FUNDING
NHS funding is a complicated affair, and uses a commissioning system. Initial funds are held by the NHS Primary Care Trusts or PCT; these trusts will commission hospitals, general practitioners and other types of medical operators, for healthcare services. The PCT is initially allocated funding, on a budgeted basis, by the Ministry of Health. This budget is calculated upon the healthcare needs of the local population. Each PCT is required to show a break even situation across each budget term. Recent years have seen an increasingly difficult situation emerge for many PCT, as it has become more and more difficult to meet the stringent budget requirement set by the Ministry of Health.
As each separate area of the NHS is expected to break-even each fiscal year, the service as a whole should, theoretically, never see a deficit. However, in the last decade we have seen increasing amounts of over spending. Financial analysts predict that the NHS as a whole will be in deficit of almost 7 billion pounds by the end of 2010. Many people predict the end of the NHS during this decade, although very few experts are willing to offer any real answers, or propose any type of reform that will avert the pending failure of England's primary healthcare system.