Medicine does not means-test who deserves treatment
Dr Helen Webberley on Times Radio: the gender debate, with Jo Coburn, Times Radio
Gender-affirming care is different from other NHS treatment because patients have somehow brought their condition on themselves, or because their need is less legitimate than someone else's. The thinking goes: if we wouldn't fund this, we'd save money for people who really deserve it.
Medicine has never worked that way, and it shouldn't start now. We don't turn away the smoker with lung cancer or the motorcyclist who took a risk. The NHS constitution doesn't ask whether you deserve your diagnosis. What I was pointing to in that clip is that gender-affirming care has already cleared that bar: the NHS has decided there is a case for it, and where the NHS cannot reach people in time, private options exist too. Once that case is made, the conversation belongs to the doctor and the person in front of them, not to anyone else's moral arithmetic.
More from this conversation
