Replicating Britsh Health Care Cost Controls

With the Baucus "conceptual plan" for government control of the health care insurance in the U.S. passing the Finance Committee of the Senate, so it can be meshed with the other 4 draconian health plans in the Congress, we are heading in the direction of ever-increasingly expensive health care.  This will put greater burdens on the taxpayer, who will finally demand the kind of government cost controls being used in the more mature government-run health system in Great Britain.

As I have noted before, it is those whose health is deteriorating in their final few years of life who cost the most to a government-run health care system, so the only effective way to save money is to ration their care.  The British have found they can save a lot of money by putting the ill elderly in a hospice on painkilling drugs and by denying them food and water.  They die soon and stop costing money to treat.  It is very effective way for a socialized medical system to control costs.

Here is the story of a man who had stomach cancer and whose treatment stopped it.  Later, he became ill and the British doctors said his cancer had come back, though they did not do tests to prove this.  Tests cost money.  He was put in a hospice, and ignoring his family, they put him on painkiller drugs and denied him food and water.  He died in two weeks.  The post-death autopsy revealed that he died of pneumonia.  He did not have cancer.  The pneumonia was very curable.  His wife had insisted they check him for pneumonia before they put him in the hospice, but they would not do it.  It was apparently too expensive to check him for pneumonia.