Thousands of older cancer patients are being denied potentially life-saving surgery because of ageism in the NHS. The chances of being operated on start falling in middle-age and plummet for those in their 70s and older, an official study shows.
Experts blame age discrimination and poor access to specialist opinion in some areas. This may explain why older people in Britain are less likely to survive than elsewhere.
Perhaps I went a bit over the top by including the inflammatory term "death panels" in the headline -- after all, only irresponsible ignoramuses use that phrase to describe the consequences of government-controlled healthcare, right?
Lead researcher Mick Peake, of Glenfield Hospital, Leicester, said the decline in operating rates among the middle-aged is particularly worrying as surgery has the biggest benefit in long-term survival.
Some patients are not referred to specialists even though their local hospital lacks the expertise, he added.
‘There are places where the teams are just looking at the patients and saying “no”,’ he said. ‘They sit there like in the arena in the Colosseum and it’s thumbs up or thumbs down.’ There are places ‘where I wouldn’t send my cat’ because they do not offer the same level of surgical skills, he added.
And before our resident Lefties begin hammering out indignant comments decrying my intellectually dishonest conflation of Obamacare with single-payer British healthcare, let me remind them of a few facts: The president's top choice to head the CMS unequivocally adores the Brits' system, prominent Congressional Democrats are labeling Obamacare a "platform" to single-payer, and numerous Left-wing luminaries have admitted as much over the years, and someone named Barack Obama was, until very recently, an outspoken advocate of adopting the British system.
As I wrote last November, virtually unchecked government rationing is part and parcel of Obamacare -- which is no accident: