Wonderful national-care system

It's great to see a national-care system like the U.K.'s where there's no free-market alternative to corruption. Bias your way into the right reviewers, and apparently you can have particular procedures banned as not "cost effective" even if, perhaps, they are.

All of this, though, is irrelevant. It's idiotic that anyone in our country is considering moving our healthcare system from what we currently have to a system like the U.K.'s where health care is rationed and if a particular procedure is not "cost effective" then it is banned outright - even if you have the money and desire to have the procedure, even if it will provide you with the best chance at beating an illness or surviving a medical condition. Government run healthcare has all of the same problems as private HMO's - rationed care, reduced selection of doctors, banning of procedures and medicines - and adds two on top: it's more expensive than an HMO and you have no choice but to join.

Clearly we need to do something in the U.S. to insure the 15% of Americans that do not have insurance. What we can't do, however, is jettison the health care of the other 85% to reach that goal.

NICE was 'biased' over heart treatment say doctors
BBC News

The watchdog behind the move to ban a life-saving treatment for heart patients was last night accused of being the equivalent of a "nobbled jury".

A senior MP and doctors attacked the "bias" behind a decision by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence to stop using drugcoated stents. Last year, 40,000 patients had stents inserted to prevent arteries narrowing.

Stewart Jackson, a former member of the Commons Health Select Committee, said he felt betrayed by the evidence he had heard. "It's like getting a verdict from a nobbled jury," he added.

Mr Jackson is urging NICE, the health rationing watchdog, to reverse its ruling after learning there were questions over the neutrality of the academics who supplied the data on which it was based.

The Liverpool Reviews and Implementation Group was commissioned to look at the pros and cons of drug-coated stents.

But in 2005 it had already published an article in the British Medical Journal insisting that one particular stent was "not cost effective".

NICE has recommended on cost grounds that only cheaper bare metal stents be used.

Experts claim that could end up costing the NHS millions of pounds because 5,000 patients a year may need repeat surgery to reopen arteries.