Analysis: Health budget reflects rising demands

We already knew the health and social care systems would be big beneficiaries of next year's Welsh budget - getting a cash injection of £287m on top of the £220m that had already been planned.

The Welsh Government said the half a billion pound increase goes beyond what independent experts (such as Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation) analysed would be needed to deal with extra pressures and the demands of aging population.

Core NHS services (essentially the seven Welsh health boards) will get an extra £315m compared to this year. A large chunk will be used to fund pay rises for NHS staff.

Much of the rest will go on dealing with increasing demand and investment in primary care services.

Individual health boards will get to know in December exactly how much they will get.

The biggest area of health spending will continue to be mental health services which will get a total of £675m - including £15m extra - in part will fund more programmes in schools; £20m of this is a result of a two-year budget deal with Plaid Cymru.

More detailed announcements are expected soon.

For example we already knew the Welsh Government intended to spend £50m next year on the NHS transformation fund to support new joined up models of NHS and social care - two projects have already been approved.

But regional partnership boards will be given £30m extra to drive forward the work of joining up health and social care

Health Secretary Vaughan Gething told AMs there had been challenges in recent years due to austerity but now "they did not have money to avoid a process of change".

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Mr Gething also previously announced that £15m, would be spent on more staff and beds in intensive care departments - which had difficulty coping last winter.

However the Welsh Government would argue that the overall commitment to boost funding health and care reflects their importance to the people of Wales.

But in a way, the Welsh Government is also mirroring last summer's UK Government announcement of £20bn extra by 2023 for the health service in England.

Prime Minister Theresa May described the uplift as a NHS 70th "birthday present"

But it's still unclear how the UK Government intends to pay for the NHS England's cash boost over the longer term - and that's a problem for ministers in Cardiff.

For example, if it is funded by tax rises - then the Welsh Government will get more cash overall from Westminster.

But, if the extra NHS cash comes from cuts to Whitehall departments that are devolved in Wales - then that could mean the Welsh Government will have to find even deeper cuts to other parts of its budget.

Last month, the Welsh Government said "we expect to receive the extra resources for the NHS announced in June without offsetting reductions elsewhere".

But more generally treating and caring for the population is consuming an ever increasing proportion of the Welsh budget.

Spending for health and social services accounts for about 50% of the Welsh Government's total resource budget. At the start of devolution it was around 36%.

So is there a risk the Welsh Government could become a health authority which also happens to be responsible for other things?

• Fear of NHS Wales 'black hole'

• Warning over funding gap

Last month Sophie Howe - the Future Generation Commissioner warned prioritising the NHS at the expense of others could cause problems down the line if it leads to an erosion of services (like council services) that help us live healthily in the first place.

"The reality is that the NHS is sucking up an increasing share of the budget every year to treat illness and this is at the cost of services which have a focus on keeping people well in the first place such as libraries and community centres, social care and leisure services," she said.