The NHS outpatient clinic becomes a familiar place, and the prospects of life in the slow lane look increasingly grim. More alarming still are the endless rows of aged and infirm that seem to populate such clinics. These were the young of yesteryear, and to the forty-somethings of this world, they represent the future. It is one of the great ironies of modern medicine that practically all attempts at improving health are ultimately self-defeating. The NHS is the victim of demographic and technological trends that are threatening to impoverish every major country.
Illness can affect people in all walks of life, but disproportionately it affects the old.
Governments across the planet have been aware of the implications of this 'demographic time bomb' for decades. But as a practising NHS doctor, I have become aware not just of the increasing age of NHS clientele, but of their changing nature. The NHS was born out of the Second World War and its most regular clients are the children of that conflict. There was a time when the NHS was the only service industry a working man would ever encounter. Today it is just another player in a cut-throat market.