To my mind those drs were paternalistic. They made choices on a patient's behalf by limiting the options that they presented.
I agree with you on that, Weetabixandshreddies. Drs clearly need to give a full overview about what is possible regarding the condition in question, what they can do and what can be done only elsewhere (where?) and who pays for it. I know it isn't always done like that, but a professional doctor will do that.
A friend of mine, MD, had a well paid job at an equivalent to the NHS in continental Europe. She had to decide, who is eligible for some procedure and who is not. And the decisions were clearly based on 'who needs it most' and 'how much money in total can we spend'. She quit, because she found it very taxing to deny treatment to people, who would clearly need it - just not badly enough.
I still think that, even if she had been able to grant every procedure she found useful for the patients, this is very different from SRS 'on demand', as regarding SRS, clearly, you need very thorough psychotherapy beforehand, to weed out self-harmers, get to the bottom of the motivation, manage expectations, in order for there to be a condition where it can be secured that a transition process will indeen increase the wellbing for the patient.
(Personally, I believe, in cases where these conditions of thorough therapy are fulfilled, NHS&Co should pay for SRS. Heck, Dr. Ken Zucker is a sance specialist in the field and he thinks SRS can make sense in some cases, and he should know. But obviously he is not on board with 'on demand').