Are you saying that someone with mental health problems not killing themselves is any less worthy a cause than treating someone with cancer?

My step-father has paranoid schizophrenia. He didn't ask to be born with it, but if it weren't for the NHS, he would be dead. That's a fact.

Equally, he couldn't afford nor access appropriate services in his home country of Canada, and ended up homeless on the street for years on end, and ended up with a criminal record because of his untreated paranoid schizophrenia, which meant he negatively impacted others.

I've been suicidal myself at times. I have a friend being treated for cancer currently, I've had family members treated for cancer in old age. A life is a life.

> Are you saying that someone with mental health problems not killing themselves is any less worthy a cause than treating someone with cancer?

Not at all. I merely stated that there’s a competition in resources between the two.

Innovations that improve the quality/cost of mental health treatment are therefore still valuable in an NHS system where treatment is free to the patient because they allow more resources to be directed towards the rest of the healthcare system. Or alternatively, expand the coverage of mental health treatment for the same budget.

> I merely stated that there’s a competition in resources between the two.

But why compare/contrast those two? They're both health care, after all. There's competition in resources between all specialties. Why is contrasting those two particular ones worthwhile as opposed to say, stating there's a competition between oncologists and gastroenterologists?

I highlighted budget competition to demonstrate that improvements in the cost of health care are always useful, even in systems where patients aren’t charged directly.

As to the choice of specialties in the comparison, mental health was the subject of discussion in the thread and the other selected speciality was arbitrary.

> The problem is the elected party spaffing countless hundreds of billions on failed projects that are completely irrelevant to cancer treatment or the NHS.

thats a funny way to deflect responsibility from the voter. unless you're saying the elections are rigged? :)

to downvoters: how is it wrong? vote for other candidates. No good candidates? become one. the people as a whole has nobody to blame but themselves, this is how it is in a democracy, you have to take (i know i know, BAD) personal accountability/responsibility, which then sums up to the personal responsibility of the population as a whole, which is then reflected in the elected representatives.