by Harrison Price

I found this to be a rather disturbing article from England about their National Health Service and the rationing of care.  Let me share just a few points from this article:

Tens of thousands with chronic back pain will be forced to live in agony after a decision to slash the number of painkilling injections issued on the NHS, doctors have warned.

The Government’s drug rationing watchdog says “therapeutic” injections of steroids, such as cortisone, which are used to reduce inflammation, should no longer be offered to patients suffering from persistent lower back pain when the cause is not known.

Instead the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is ordering doctors to offer patients remedies like acupuncture and osteopathy.

So when the state decides what is “acceptable” care for its citizens, those taxpayers, who shell out their income to “participate” in socialized medicine are denied the care they need they have to spend what little money they have left over to buy their own care:

Specialists fear tens of thousands of people, mainly the elderly and frail, will be left to suffer excruciating levels of pain or pay as much as £500 each for private treatment.

The NHS currently issues more than 60,000 treatments of steroid injections every year. NICE said in its guidance it wants to cut this to just 3,000 treatments a year, a move which would save the NHS £33 million.

The article continues with more “great” news for victims of socialized medicine:

The NICE guidelines admit that evidence was limited for many back pain treatments, including those it recommended. Where scientific proof was lacking, advice was instead taken from its expert group. But specialists are furious that while the group included practitioners of alternative therapies, there was no one with expertise in conventional pain relief medicine to argue against a decision to significantly restrict its use.

He said: “The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients. It will mean more people on opiates, which are addictive, and kill 2,000 a year. It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 per cent failure rate.”

What President Obama wants to do is to give us a similar system.  For those who say this is a lie spread to instill “fear” into people here is Obama saying it in his own words:

What we are now seeing in England we could very well see in the U.S.  The article finishes:

“It was horrendous, I was spending hours lying on the sofa, or in bed, I couldn’t spend a whole evening out. I was referred to a specialist, who decided to give me a set of injections. The difference was tremendous”,

Within days, she was able to return to her old life, gardening, caring for her husband Herbert, and enjoying social occasions.

“I just felt fabulous – almost immediately, there was not a twinge. I only had an injection every two years, but it really has transformed my life; if I couldn’t have them I would be in despair”.

I know what some of you might be saying… “Isn’t our healthcare rationed now under private insurance policies?”  The answer is “yes” certain procedures and treatments are not covered however take a look at these facts:

• Survival rates in the U.S. for common cancers are higher, and in some cases much higher, than in Europe and Canada.

• Americans have better access to treatment for chronic diseases than patients in other developed nations and spend less time waiting for care than Canadians and Britons.

• Americans have more access to new medical technologies than Canadians and United Kingdom residents, and are responsible for most health care innovations.

• Americans are more satisfied with their care than their counterparts in nations with socialized medicine.