NICE - British Death Panels

And you say that death panels are right-wing bullshit. Read the following few paragraphs from the New York Times

The New York Times
The Evidence GapBritish Balance Benefit vs. Cost of Latest Drugs
By GARDINER HARRIS
December 3, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/health/03nice.html

RUISLIP, England — When Bruce Hardy’s kidney cancer spread to his lung, his doctor recommended an expensive new pill from Pfizer. But Mr. Hardy is British, and the British health authorities refused to buy the medicine. His wife has been distraught.

“Everybody should be allowed to have as much life as they can,” Joy Hardy said in the couple’s modest home outside London.

If the Hardys lived in the United States or just about any European country other than Britain, Mr. Hardy would most likely get the drug, although he might have to pay part of the cost. A clinical trial showed that the pill, called Sutent, delays cancer progression for six months at an estimated treatment cost of $54,000.

But at that price, Mr. Hardy’s life is not worth prolonging, according to a British government agency, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The institute, known as NICE, has decided that Britain, except in rare cases, can afford only £15,000, or about $22,750, to save six months of a citizen’s life.

If this is not a F**KING death panel I don't know what is.

UPDATE: September 13, 2009

In an article in The New York Times, Politics and the Age Gap, ADAM NAGOURNEY writes "(the infamous but nonexistent “death panels”)." These people are priceless.

EDIT: 12/9/2010
See 1:15



Robert Reich

"And by the way we're going to have to if you're very old we're not going to give you all that technology ...
It's too expensive so we're going to let you die."