Looking at the single-payer future: Great Britain in the debate over health services rationing

You should visit Medical Futility on a regular basis if you want a truly informed view of the complexities of both our health care system and others around the world.

Today there is a post directing you to the ongoing debate in Great Britain over the inevitable rationing of medical services under the NHS:

In the UK, as in the USA, rationing already happens all the time. But the choices are neither transparent nor rational. It is, as the chairman of the NHS Alliance noted, "the great unspoken reality." Why unspoken? Because the choices are not just "nasty" but downright "tragic." As Marrin observes , these are "nettles which politicians have for decades found too painful to touch."

And this is how Minette Marrin frames the issue in today's London Times:

I would start with the beginning and the end of life. It does not seem right to me that hugely expensive efforts are made to keep very premature babies alive only to lead a life of severe disability. Nor do I think it is right to strive to keep very old people alive; there was something to be said for pneumonia, “the old man’s friend”.

Is this the sort of universal health care we want in America? One that makes the government a potential decider of which babies are too unhealthy to live, or which old people should be allowed to expire?

Our system is broken; I've said it before. But what we really need in this country is a serious policy debate over the proper way to fix it, and not a slavish imitation of a system in which the wheels are already beginning to fall off.

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