Helen Salisbury: The NHS is not unsustainable

This week I visited two older patients of mine who recently had surgery for cancer. I’m fairly sure that, when I first qualified, similar operations would not have been offered to people of very advanced years. This shift may have come about because our surgery and perioperative management have improved, or maybe because more patients now in their late 80s and early 90s are in good general health and therefore fit for surgery. Whatever the reason, lives are extended—or made more comfortable—at a later age than we once thought possible.I think about such patients whenever I hear commentators say that the cost of the NHS is unsustainable. Are they suggesting that my patients should not have had their surgery? The idea that NHS spending is in some way too high is not new, and I grow weary of these arguments that come round again and again, especially around the time…
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