Death Panels in the United Kingdom

How are the costs of medical care contained under a socialized medicine regime? What happens when government committees are empowered to decide where health care dollars are spent–theirs, yours and everyone else’s?
In the United Kingdom, death panels designate certain patients as “dying” and deny them medical treatment, thus averting any possibility that they may not be dying after all:

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.
Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.
But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn. As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. …
“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.
“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients.”
The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS. …
Dr Hargreaves…added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

Sarah Palin, consider yourself vindicated.

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