The BBC covers the decision by N.I.C.E. to deny those suffering with liver cancer the opportunity to be treated with a drug that will alleviate their pain and hopefully extend their lives by some months. Professor Littlejohn from N.I.C.E. was allowed to get away with blue murder in his attempt to shift the blame onto the Pharmaceutical company behind the drug. Socialised health care, as manifest in the NHS, does not work and the not so nice quangocrats in N.I.C.E. merit much more intense scrutiny from the BBC. I shan’t hold my breath awaiting this.
UK DEATH PANELS…
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Probably the worst aspect of this institutionalised murder, is that if they dare to have the audacity to buy the drug themselves they will have other treatment withdrawn.
Scum run the Government, so are we surprised?
I wasn’t aware you couldn’t have private healthcare
I wasn’t aware that everyone could afford private health care, especially expensive cancer drugs. If that’s the case, what’s the point of the NHS?
But not everyone can in the US either – not by a long shot, so what’s the problem, either way it’s only available to those who can afford it
The relevant “It” here is the drug in question. The US is irrelevant. The NICE guy has admitted that he is happy to ration the service because he and the NHS bosses have defined “quality of life” in a way that allows them to choose who can live a bit longer – even with an improved quality of life, it seems – and who can’t. This means that people who cannot afford private care, or who can but choose the NHS because they’ve already technically paid for it via taxation, are at the mercy of bean-counters who decide who deserves to live or die.
Prof. Littlejohn stated very clearly that he and his colleagues felt that it simply wasn’t worth saving or prolonging the lives of those who could benefit from this drug. A handful of individuals coldly deciding the value of human life. Yet ol’ Justin couldn’t quite bring himself to say that. He managed to point out that the Romanians could afford it, but let stand LittleJohn’s defense that his bean-counters had already decided that those who could benefit from this drug weren’t worth it. They placed a monetary value on human life, but the BBC wouldn’t dare point that out because it would bring up that nasty “rationing” argument, calling into quesiton all sort of unpleasant things about the NHS (and ObamaCare, as you know).
So, the state not providing a drug = ‘death panels’?
It’s not just “a” drug, though is it? This is reductio ad absurdum, your attempting to use a general definition of “drug” in such a way. It’s dishonest. In this case, we’re talking about a very specific drug in very specific circumstances, in which death is most certainly involved.
In this particular case, this specific drug is being denied for non-medical reasons. A decision about who dies when. In a sane world, this would be considered practicing medicine without a license.
Stewart
Yes, that’s a good point the BBC does not explore.