By Catriona Renton BBC Scotland's Politics Show

NHS needs 'national debate'

But he believes there is one drug - Cetuximab - which could help prolong his life.

He couldn't get it from his local health board, NHS Grampian, and his family is paying for it instead.

"It is a drug that has a one in four chance of extending my life," he said.

"We're paying for it as a family through my 86-year-old mother, my 97-year-old mother-in-law, other family members and ourselves.

"It's about �3,600 for each cycle of the drug. That comes to abut �12,000 for the treatment."

This is one man's story - but could it become a tale that is heard more often?

By the end of this financial year, more than �65bn will have been spent on health in Scotland since devolution.

If we remain a sickness service that always responds to people being unwell, the demand will always be there and just get bigger and bigger for us Ken O'Neill Glasgow doctor

Scotland is still ahead - but England is catching up.

The Scots budget saw health spending increase by 1.4% in real terms but, in the comprehensive spending review, the figure increased by 3.9% in England.

With a tighter UK budget settlement than expected and a smaller pot of money available across all services, how will the NHS cope?

Patient representatives believe it is perfectly reasonable for them to have high expectations of the National Health Service.

"They know what treatments are out there and they expect to get it in on the NHS," said Dr Jean Turner of the Scotland Patients' Association.

"When it happens to you, you expect to get it."

The Scottish Medicines Consortium makes decisions about which drugs are viable - but has to draw the line somewhere.

"Any decision we make that allows a drug to be used always brings with it an opportunity cost, the fact that something else will not happen in the health service if we spend it on that drug," said the organisation's Dr Ken Paterson.

Clinical circumstances

"We cannot do everything that we possibly could do and it makes sense to look to see what things we're doing are giving us the most health gain, the most improvement for patients that we can possibly get for the money that we're spending."

Other areas of the NHS face tough choices.

Dr Ken O'Neill practices in Glasgow's Ibrox area, where a number of his patients live in some of the poorest areas in Scotland.

Money, he said, was not the only answer.

"If we remain a sickness service that always responds to people being unwell, the demand will always be there and just get bigger and bigger for us," he said.

"We need to be thinking more about being a health service that works to help people remain well."

Mr Gray and his wife, Tina, said they would continue the fight for NHS funding.

NHS Grampian has taken the Scottish Medicines Consortium's advice not to fund the drug.

If it can be shown that the clinical circumstances of a particular patient may benefit more from the treatment than could normally be expected, funding can be made available.