British ObamaCare update: Bureaucrats getting in the way of saving lives

This could be America in 2020.

The Guardian reports on the latest atrocity by the National Health Service, Great Britain's government-run health care agency. A London Hospital spent $4.6 million USD on a CyberKnife machine, a highly accurate radiotherapy mechanism. NHS bureaucrats say the machine doesn't work, but senior physicians disagree--they say it can save lives. But it won't end up like most basement weight-sets--in other words, an expensive coat rack. Patients with private insurance will be able to benefit from the Cyberknife--if insurers agree to pay for the treatment. Britain has two other Cyberknifes--both are in private hospitals.

There's a derisive medical slang-term in the UK known as the post-code lottery. (ZIP codes are known as post-codes there.) Bureaucracies are inefficient distributors--why should medical care be any different? Well, it isn't. Based upon where you live, you might end up with less care than someone living in a different post-code.

The latest example is Dr. Becky Smith, a 30-year old NHS physician and a cancer victim. She's been denied potentially a life-saving by her local NHS Trust, but another, located just five miles from her home, offers it.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph is reporting that there is a secret NHS plan to axe thousands of frontline jobs--that means doctors and nurses.

That's the way government-run health care works. Or doesn't work. It is cruel and capricious--just like a lottery.

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