Ah, humane socialist healthcare.
Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is cutting off
painkilling drugs for some chronic back pain sufferers in order
to reduce costs, the
Telegraph (UK) reports.
This frightening story from Jolly Olde England ought to serve as
a warning to Americans high on ObamaCare.
From the Telegraph article:
It hardly needs to be said that if a government takeover of
America's healthcare system happens, such headlines are likely
to become commonplace here.
The Government's drug rationing watchdog says "therapeutic"
injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to
reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients
suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not
known.
Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical
Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients
remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.
Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the
elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels
of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.
The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid
injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to
cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would
save the NHS £33 million.
But the British Pain Society, which represents specialists in
the field, has written to NICE calling for the guidelines to be
withdrawn after its members warned that they would lead to many
patients having to undergo unnecessary and high-risk spinal
surgery. [...]
That's just one universal healthcare horror story from the United
Kingdom. There are thousands of others.
And just wait until socialist medicine comes to America.
The practice of medicine will become explicitly political.
Bureaucrats will make decisions that deny care and then the
interest group warfare will begin because Americans, unlike
submissive, statist Europeans, don't like being told how to live
by government officials.
It will be a bonanza for lobbyists and lawyers as they
advocate for their respective patient interest
groups. Politically effective groups will carry the day and
those patients who lack political pull will be forced to go
without care or will be provided substandard care.
Think of the frenzied lobbying and legislative horse trading that
took place during the brief debate over President Obama's
stimulus legislation -- and multiply that by 300 million.
That could very well be America's future.
