Obamacare: Rationing British Style

President Obama has appointed Dr. Donald Berwick to lead implementation of Obamacare. Berwick, an unabashed cheerleader for Britain’s National Health Services (NHS) program, says: ” I am romantic about the NHS; I love it.”

So, how is the NHS program doing? Our good friend, Dr. David Prentice, penned an article describing the utter failure of NHS. According to Prentice, the UK is accelerating its rationing program. The victims: older and sicker people. The beneficiaries: the young.

The NHS plans call for “restrictions on the most basic treatments for the sick and injured,” says Prentice. “Operations including hip and knee replacements and cataract surgery will be rationed in a new attempt to save money…..plans also include cuts for terminally ill patients (dying cancer patients will supposedly be sent home and told to manage their own symptoms), closure of nursing homes for the elderly, cost-cutting measures in pediatric and maternity services and care of the elderly.”

Prentice continues: “Doctors have already been told that their patients can have some operations only if they are given ‘prior approval’ by a ‘primary care trust,’ with each authorization made on a ‘case by case’ basis…..A recent study found that under the British nationalized health care system, inequities in the mortality rate between rich and poor have increased, with the inequalities today worse than those during the 1930s economic depression (prior to the NHS).”

If you haven’t been frightened yet, you should be terrified now. The care of your mother, father, or yourself is being placed into the hands of Berwick who spouts: “Excellent health care is, by definition, redistributional.” Obamacare is built on the premise of redistribution of funds from the old to the young, including redistributing health care. Right up Berwick’s alley.

Read Dr. Prentice’s article here.

Barbara Lyons