Single-Payer Hell: British NHS denies cancer patients life-extending drugs to save $$$

Monday, February 28, 2011
Single-Payer Hell: British NHS denies cancer patients life-extending drugs to save $$$
From the UK Telegraph: Cancer sufferers refused life-extending drugs despite Government pledge. And the subline: "Dying cancer patients have been refused costly life-extending drugs on cost grounds despite a Government promise to end the "scandal" forever." If you want to know what ObamaCare will be like, check out how this story starts out:
Their requests have been rejected by regional health authorities who were accused of operating covert “blacklists” to restrict dozens of treatments to save money.
Blacklists. Coming soon, your liver transplant is going to be decided based on your politics.
An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered more than 80 cases in which desperately sick NHS patients have been refused the cancer drugs their doctor sought, in the four months since a £200 million fund was introduced to stop health authorities rationing treatments.

...Ministers were responding to years of anger over a system which meant patients were unable to secure life-extending drugs because central NHS rationers had decided the treatments were not “cost effective”.

Announcing the fund last summer, Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, promised to end “the scandal” of cancer patients being refused the drugs that their doctors sought, because of restrictions by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE).
Turns out, that promise was as good as one made by Obama. The UK Telegraph's investigation found this:

* At least 86 cases involving terminally-ill patients being turned down;

* Extreme variations in access to drugs, with one NHS region promising free access to more than three times as many cancer treatments as another;

* Local policies so restrictive that in many parts of the country, consultants are expected not to even bother asking for drugs which are not on the “priority lists”.
And this snippet pretty much explains what we have been saying ObamaCare ius going to take this country: "Bureaucrats have created complex structures, leaving terminally-ill patients to spend their last months fighting for drugs which could increase their survival."

No government-run healthcare system embodies all that is wrong and unholy with the very concept of Obamacare more than Britain's barbaric, medieval, hellhole the National Health Service (NHS), the 3rd largest employer in the world with more bureaucrats on the payroll than doctors. In Britain, under the draconian NHS, cancer patients are denied life-saving drugs to save money, millions of operations are being slated for cancellation to save money, wives have to go on hunger strikes to get their spouses car, Alzheimer's patients are denied coverage because the disease is not classified as a health condition, the ambulance service gets paid to NOT take patients to hospitals, patients are encouraged to email doctors rather than visit, patients are denied life-extending drugs because of the expense, broken arms sometimes take up to 10 months to fix, patients are left on operating tables for lack of equipment, babies born prematurely are left to die if they come out before a certain date, terminally ill patients, and some that are not ill at all, are put on a fast track to death, grandmas are left to die of starvation, patients with chest pains are sent home with pain pills only to die later that same day, patients are denied water only to die later of dehydration, women give birth on the pavement, and in hospital toilets and hallways, and prisoners eat better than NHS patients. More than 1 million people are subject to neglectful care and surgeries have failure rates up to 33%, with some surgeries done or not done in error, the infirm are routinely neglected and patients die routinely due to filth and blood-splattered equipment. For many, the only thing standing between them and deranged 3rd world doctors shipped into Britain to save money is a nurse. The horror stories go on and on. BUT... NHS does have money to have violent child predators put on Viagra, and to irreversibly mutilate 12-year olds. Oh yeah - the bureaucrats exempt themselves from NHS and instead get private coverage. Just like in ObamaCare! If you yourself try to get even a private consultation? They'll bar you from necessary surgery. Take that you anti-socialist scum!

HT: memeorandum. More from The Lonely Conservative