Welcome to the world of sexed-up medicine, where patients have been turned into customers, and clinics and waiting rooms are jammed with healthy people, lured in to have their blood pressure taken and cholesterol, smear test, bowel or breast screening done. In the world of sexed-up medicine pharmaceutical companies gloss over research they don't like and charities often use dubious science and dodgy PR to 'raise awareness' of their disease, leaving a legacy of misinformation in their wake. Our obsession with screening swallows up the time of NHS staff and the money of healthy people who pay thousands to private companies for tests they don't need. Meanwhile, the truly sick are left to wrestle with disjointed services and confusing options. Explaining the truth behind the screening statistics and investigating the evidence behind the hype, Margaret McCartney, an award-winning writer and doctor, argues that this patient paradox - too much testing of well people and not enough care for the sick - worsens health inequalities and drains professionalism, harming both those who need treatment and those who don't.

The NHS is the closest thing the UK has to a national religion. No wonder: it unites people across social and class divides. But it is also under pressure, underfunded, and unravelling at the seams. When the NHS was founded, children died of whooping cough and tuberculosis, and the average person lived less than 50 years. Now childhood deaths are rare and we expect to live almost twice as long. Many of us swallow dozens of daily medications, and the NHS promises to keep treating us, rich or poor, according to need. But as social care budgets are slashed, the pressure on the NHS has reached a critical level - along with accusations of high death rates, lazy, uncaring staff morale, and unnecessary deaths at the weekend. Margaret McCartney, author of The Patient Paradox and Living with Dying, argues that the last few decades of short-term political policies have caused lasting damage to the NHS, wasting money, time, harming patients, and damaging staff morale. Instead, we need a new realisation of the founding principles of the NHS, one where patients and professionals work together to create an evidence based - not a party political - NHS. It is the only future it can survive in.