Northern Territory Health Minister John Elferink says the cost of treating the jurisdiction's elderly has been coming at the expense of children and priorities should change.

In comments that have drawn anger from a terminally ill patient, Mr Elferink suggested cutting funding to treat the elderly in their final stages of life so that more money could be spent caring for infants.

"I suspect if you spoke to somebody who ... for argument's sake, had end-stage renal failure and said, 'we can continue treatment but by discontinuing treatment your grandchildren would have a better opportunity', many of those old people would say 'yeah, I accept that'," Mr Elferink said.

Speaking to the ABC after the annual Australasian Aeromedical Conference in Darwin, Mr Elferink said he had talked to other Government ministers about the idea but was yet to form a concrete policy.

"The fact is we've pretty much reached the limit of how old we can grow as a species," he said.

"And yet we pour huge effort and resources into the last year of a person's life.

"If we are doing that, we are doing that at the expense of some other point in the medical system."

He acknowledged the comments coming during seniors month would be controversial, but Mr Elferink insisted emphasis should be on quality of life, not longevity.

Mr Elferink, who also has the children and families and disability services portfolio, estimated an elderly person with a terminal illness cost the NT health system about $1 million per year.

"Think of the work that could be achieved ... in the first year of life with $1 million," he said.

"You could probably touch hundreds of kids with that sort of money."

'Does he want to march us out like in the holocaust?'

Terminally ill cancer patient John Morphett, 82, was scathing of Mr Elferink's comments, and said every day he was alive was a golden moment.

"Let's see how [Mr Elferink] feels when he gets to that age," Mr Morphett said.

"What's he going to do, stand in front of a firing squad with the rest of the 65-year-old members of the community? What do they do, do they march all these people out like they did in the holocaust?"

Opposition health spokeswoman Lynne Walker described Mr Elferink's comments as an outrageous and insensitive thought bubble.

"I represent many constituents who suffer from renal health and I think the suggestion from the Health Minister that this cost shifting occur is outrageous and once again simply a sign that the Health Minister is out of touch and a Government that is unravelling," Ms Walker said.

Dr Nick Coatsworth, director of the National Critical Care and Trauma Response Centre in Darwin, lent support to Mr Elferink.

"As a former practitioner at Royal North Shore Hospital, the oldest demographic in Australia, I would like to endorse the minister's comments about ageing," Dr Coatsworth told the conference.

Graeme Bevis, chief executive of the NT branch of the Council of the Ageing (COTA), disagreed with Mr Elferink.

"If that was confirmed in policy I believe COTA NT would pursue that endlessly," Mr Bevis said.

"I think it would be seen as disadvantageous for seniors and anything that is a disadvantage for seniors, as their advocacy body, COTA would take that on."