The credit crisis and health care

I learnt a great deal from John Appleby's excellent article. On
reflecting on the
public health perspective, the credit crunch will have an indirect impact
on
deprivation indices in communities and thereby a probable longer term
effect
on the health of populations.

One way of predicting these might be to model the change in IMD
scores (as
unemployment statistics form part of the IMD score) and then estimate the
size
of the effect on the population and or sub populations.

Using health economic terms, this might lead to an amplification of
the rise in
demand in certain areas of health / ill health - for example the elderly
who have
an additional burden of ill health as well as being relatively poor and
suffering a
disproportionately from inflation.

It might be that the "credit crunch ill-health amplifier" may not
only be short to
medium term but even long term in effects being apparent and understood.

Competing interests:
None declared