Another target for the anti-healthcare backlash has been the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). NICE, it is asserted, is another example of the so-called “Death Panel”, sitting in judgment on those in need of treatment.
Only NICE doesn’t do that: the body assesses courses of treatment to approve them and confirm that they give value for money. Existing treatments using long established medications do not enter, given their inevitably lower costs. And those existing treatments are going to cover the vast majority of patients.
But for those denouncing the NHS, this is not sufficient. There remains the spectre of healthcare rationing, which is routinely pilloried, and which by implication at least does not happen in the USA. Except, of course, that it does: it is merely the body sitting in judgment that is different.
In the USA, healthcare rationing is usually called “Insurance company won’t cover it”. Victims of this singularly wicked yet profit enhancing technique include the family of the current Prez – yes, the bloke getting all the flak from Rupe and Company.
What you will not be seeing on Fox News this evening.
Tuesday 18 August 2009
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