Only a few make it to the clinic, and then land up on another waiting list for treatment. Now many are vying with each other for patients, and we are all bombarded with a subtle advertising campaign from the moment we enter a hospital site. There has been a dramatic change in psychology. Clinics no longer keep people waiting. Casualty departments pride themselves on rapid case assessment.
More people means more money - but from the same pot.
This new welcoming face in hospital care has meant that GPs are now being pushed to make decisions themselves about rationing. The situation is made ever more difficult by astounding advances in medical technology, some of which save money, but most simply gobble up resources faster than ever. The slimmest hopes of cure drive doctors and patients alike to ever more exotic approaches. But high-tech medicine is often medicine gone stark raving mad, where those who are ill become dwarfed by tubes, wires and machines in a desperate fight against the inevitable in a culture that seems to see all death as failure. Rationing has always been with us, and should continue to be.