Not NICE

The warnings have been there for a while. But they’re more acute now.

Like this warning about the rise in death rates under nationalized health care. Here’s the lede:

Imagine that your two best friends are British and Canadian tobacco addicts. The Britisher battles lung cancer. The Canadian endures emphysema and wheezes as he walks around with clanging oxygen canisters. You probably would not think, “Maybe I should pick up smoking.” While that response would be highly irrational, the fact that America even is considering government medicine is equally wacky.

Sufficiently startled?

The state guides health care for our two closest allies: Great Britain and Canada. Like us, these are prosperous, industrial, Anglophone democracies. Nevertheless, compared to America, they suffer higher death rates for diseases, their patients experience severe pain, and they ration medical services.

Read those statistics. Furthermore…

The U.K.’s National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) just announced plans to cut its 60,000 annual steroid injections for severe back pain sufferers to just 3,000. “The consequences of the NICE decision will be devastating for thousands of patients,” Dr. Jonathan Richardson of Bradford Hospitals Trust told London’s Daily Telegraph. “It will mean more people having spinal surgery, which is incredibly risky, and has a 50 percent failure rate.”

Things don’t look much better up north, under Canadian socialized medicine…

Government medicine has proved an excruciating disaster in the U.K. and Canada. Our allies’ experiences with this dreadful idea should horrify rather than inspire everyday Americans, not to mention seemingly blind Democratic politicians.