Quote Originally Posted by rory_20_uk View Post
I never said suffer. Palliative care used to be there to ensure there was no suffering.
I understand what you mean by that, but operations such as a hip replacement are not life-ending, and they could still be alive and kicking in 20 years time. So unless you are suggesting they should go without for 20 years in a situation where they are being disabled due to being unable to access services due to mobility.

I have to admit though, when I first read your last statement, I was reminded of this episode from Star Trek on a similar issue. In short, the custom on the planet was for its citizens to conduct a ritual suicide at the age of 60, to "avoid old age, infirmity, indignity, dependence on others, and the cruel uncertainty about when the end would come".

Quote Originally Posted by rory_20_uk View Post
The elderly have not necessarily contributed the most - especially since the cost of funding has shot up vastly. The solutions are either to continue to add money (no idea where this money is) or to ration the money there is. And to spend money giving some a chance means others are going to die who had a better chance. The money spent is not insignificant since of course it is not just the cost of the drugs, but the ongoing costs.
The thing is, preventative health measures over the long-term have proven to save significantly more than the costs incurred over the life-time. So whilst you might complain lets say, £1000 treatment, if that treatment then saves us £10,000 down the line due to advances stages of a illness due to lack of treatment, then that is a saving of £9,000. There is then the added benefits of this on the economy, as it means that person can work more, earn more money, spend more money, which means as a society, we just saved even more. Given your background, you should have access to this evidence yourself to know I am not pulling this out of a hat. Could start picking things at random, even arguments such as Early Intervention Services for Psychosis are a good example, as in catching young people early during their most vulnerable, we prevent them from having to go into fully staffed inpatient units, become isolated and disconnected from society, being out of work, etc. So putting in money now means we will reap the benefits in the future. At the moment, we still do not have this fully implemented, so we are currently tackling those who are in that situation, and trying to provide support now for those who need assistance (in typical underfunded and undervalued NHS way).

There is a chronic bed shortage for Mental Health at the moment too, and some of the 'short term' decisions are actually costing the NHS significantly more money, due to how the system works. They close down hospitals in areas, combining them into larger hospitals with around 60% of the bed capacity of the Hospitals being closed down, then having to send off and pay for the patients to be in Private Hospitals. As you can imagine, the Private Hospitals charge 3x the rate of the trust providing the same service. So it is a practice of closing 100 beds, forcing those patients to occupy 100 private beds, so effectively costing the trust the price of 300 beds.

As for the statement about 'means others are going to die who had a better chance', this is not actually the case. What actually suffers are the non-life threatening treatments or further cuts to Mental Health services, even though Depression is the biggest cause of death in the country.