NHS Meltdown: Doctors Brace for Patient Rage at Pending Cuts and Rationing by Doctor

The NHS is broke—and so apparently care is going to go from whatever you would call it now to an even worse mess. From the Guardian:

Doctors face demonstrations outside their surgeries and questions about their high salaries by angry patients because of the government’s radical NHS shakeup, the new leader of Britain’s GPs warns. Desperate patients denied life-extending drugs or surgery for their ailments may also vent their frustrations on GPs, because they are due to assume control of deciding how £80bn-a-year of health funding is spent, said Dr Clare Gerada, who takes over tomorrow as chair of the Royal College of GPs.

In an outspoken attack on health secretary Andrew Lansley’s NHS reform plans, she also hit out at his decision to transfer responsibility for rationing access to treatment from the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) and primary care trusts to GPs in England from 2013. “At worst, the negative impact for GPs could be patients lobbying outside their front door, saying, ‘You’ve got a nice BMW car but you will not allow me to have this cytotoxic drug that will give me three more months of life,’” Gerada told the Guardian in an interview. “I’m concerned that my profession, GPs, will be exposed to lobbying by patients, patient groups and the pharma industry to fund or commission their bit of the service. There could be letters from MPs and patient groups, and begging letters from patients.”

Yes, let faceless bureaucrats do the dirty work.  How about not rationing?

Centralized health care and budgeting leads, in difficult times, to debacle.  Let this be a warning to the U.S. if we ever seriously flirt with single payer.