-- Karl Marx
Wall Street Journal (July 7, 2009): "The British officials who established NICE [the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence], in the late 1990s pitched it as a body that would ensure that the government-run National Health System used 'best practices' in medicine. As the Guardian reported in 1998: 'Health ministers are setting up [NICE], designed to ensure that every treatment, operation, or medicine used is the proven best. It will root out under-performing doctors and useless treatments, spreading best practices everywhere.'
"What NICE has become in practice is a rationing board . . . it has by now established the principle that the only way to control health-care costs is for this panel of medical high priests to dictate limits on certain kinds of care to certain classes of patients.
"The NICE board even has a mathematical formula for doing so, based on a 'quality adjusted life year.' While the guidelines are complex, NICE currently holds that, except in unusual cases, Britain cannot afford to spend more than about $22,000 to extend a life by six months. ... NICE merely issues orders, and patients have little recourse.
"The NICE precedent also undercuts the Obama Administration's argument that vast health savings can be gleaned simply by automating health records or squeezing out 'waste.' Britain has tried all of that but ultimately has concluded that it can only rein in costs by limiting care."
Shifting from the best care to the cheapest.
"The infirm, the aged, and babies with defects will be the first to bear the brunt of the 'savings.'
"We already have a picture of such a grim future. Randy Stroup, 53, a cancer patient, applied for aid under Oregon's state health plan in 2008. He got a letter denying payments for chemotherapy, but offering money to help him kill himself.
"Under government-rationed health care, the idea of 'compassion' is likely to take on a whole new meaning."
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