Doctors and senior figures in health policy have reacted with astonishment at the government's decision not to include any extra funding for the NHS in the Autumn Statement.
In the 72-page document, which lays out the government's financial plans for the next year, the NHS is not mentioned once.
It was the first Autumn Statement since Britain voted to leave the European Union. One of the most notorious pledges of the Leave campaign was that £350m-per-week that would be saved by not being a member state could be put into the NHS.
Dr Rachel Clarke, a junior doctor based in Oxford, believes the lack of additional funding was politically motivated, and prioritising the need to make £22 billion savings by 2020 over patient safety.
"We are so overstretched and understaffed at the moment that we can barely keep our patients safe, let alone provide the high quality care we so desperately want to," Clarke told BuzzFeed News. "The political decision to deliberately underfund our NHS is going to make safe care unsustainable for thousands of patients.
"We are already seeing rising waiting times and patients lying on trolleys in corridors just like that bad old days under Thatcher.
"How much more suffering do Jeremy Hunt and Theresa May want to inflict before they face up to the fact that, as a civilised country, we ought to – and are perfectly capable of – protecting our elderly and infirm?
"I don’t know a single doctor who, like me, isn’t terrified of patients dying as a result of these draconian cuts to NHS funding."
£50 million for grammar schools. Nothing for social care. Tells you all you need to know about this Government's priorities.
Earlier this year NHS figures showed that waiting times for A&E were the worst on record, with a monthly average of 230,000 urgent cases waiting at least four hours to receive treatment.
Dr Nadia Masood, an anaesthetic registrar in London, echoed Clarke's concerns.
"I'm appalled at the government's decision to continue to underfund the NHS. Staff are on their knees crying out for help," Masood told BuzzFeed News.
"The most vulnerable patients will be affected by this. I am genuinely worried about how health and social care will continue after today's announcement.
"The scariest thing is how much the government remain in denial about the scale of this crisis and are now taking our public headlong into catastrophe."
Dr Amar Mashru, an emergency medicine specialist in London added: "The government has made a clear decision not to fund our NHS safely. The question now is when they will be honest with the electorate."
Ahead of chancellor Philip Hammond's spending announcement to parliament on Wednesday, the chief of NHS Providers, which is responsible for almost all NHS Trusts in England, called for more funding to social care and GPs in order to take pressure of already overstretched hospitals. Doctors also insisted that "catastrophe" lay ahead if the government didn't also increase spending on hospital staff.
Labour’s shadow minister for social care Barbara Keeley said it was "astonishing" that the government had failed to provide extra financial support for social care, which would allow patients who were well enough to go home to be discharged more quickly and take pressure off hospital wards.
“The Tories have ignored the chorus of voices pleading for them to address the mess they’ve created with their cuts of £4.5 billion to social care budgets," she said in a statement.
"It’s a scandal that they’ve not offered even a penny more to support this vital service. You can’t trust the Tories with social care and the NHS.”
Richard Murray, director of policy at independent health think tank The King’s Fund, also believed there could be dire consequences in not funding health services.
"The absence of new money for health or social care means that the already intense pressures on services will continue to grow," Murray said in a statement.
"The lack of extra money for social care funding, in particular, means we are likely to see an already threadbare safety net stretched even more thinly. This will impact on some of the most vulnerable people in society, and so goes against the government’s commitment to creating a country that works for everyone.
"The planned increases in health spending are not enough to maintain standards of care, meet rising demand and transform services."
The nurses's union, Royal College of Nurses (RCN), also expressed concern that there would not be an increase in health funding. Last month the RCN warned that the NHS was on the brink of a serious nursing crisis as a result of staff shortages caused by pay caps, an aging workforce, issues with recruitment and staff immigration concerns when Britain leaves the European Union.
While the government has said its plans to switch nursing student bursaries to student loans – announced in last year's autumn statement – will free up more money for training, many fear that mounting loan debt will prove prohibitive for prospective nurses, who would not expect to earn more than £21,000 and £25,000 in London, and could actually lead to the recruitment of fewer staff.
“The current crisis in the nursing workforce has been building through years of pay restraint. Today there was an opportunity to alleviate it, and the Chancellor has chosen not to take it," Janet Davis, general secretary of the RCN said.
“By scrapping funding for student nurse training at a time when many nurses are due to retire and there are huge uncertainties around Brexit, there is a real risk of creating a perfect storm which the profession cannot weather.
“The message many nurses will have taken home today is that fair pay, and action to recruit and retain enough staff to deliver NHS care, is not a priority for their government.
I think he said 'NHS' just once. But nowt, nada, zilch for our NHS & social care. The Tory underfunding of health & care services continues
The government however had already made it quite clear that there was no intention of pledging any more than the £10bn it has already promised to invest in the NHS by 2020, despite the fact that head of NHS England believes this to be closer to £8bn when previous cuts and inflation are taking into account, while MPs scrutinising NHS spending have put the figure closer to £4.5bn.
When Labour MP and former shadow mental health secretary Luciana Berger asked Hammond why there had been no extra NHS funding in the Autumn Statement, the chancellor repeated his assertion that the money already pledged by government was sufficient.
"We’re putting £10bn more into the NHS by the end of this parliament," Hammond told the House of Commons. "We’re delivering what senior management of the NHS asked for and it’s got to be spent and delivered effectively.
"I know it’s tempting for members of the opposition to paint everything as a crisis or as a looming chaos. It’s not the case. We have a plan for investment in the NHS. It’s being delivered."