NHS Death Panels

Sarah Palin, call your office. Drudge's splash headline today is a Telegraph article detailing a critique of Britain's relatively new "Liverpool Care Pathway", which is an oxymoron in which medical care is withdrawn when the doctors judge that a terminally ill patient is near death. Basically it works like this:

Doctor 1: Bring out yer dead.
Doctor 2: Here's one.
Doctor 1: That'll be ninepence.
NHS Patient: I'm not dead.
Doctor 1: What?
Doctor 2: Nothing. There's your ninepence.
NHS Patient: I'm not dead.
Doctor 1: 'Ere, he says he's not dead.
Doctor 2: Yes he is.
NHS Patient: I'm not.
Doctor 1: He isn't.
Doctor 2: Well, he will be soon, he's very ill.
NHS Patient: I'm getting better.
Doctor 2: No you're not, you'll be stone dead in a moment.
Doctor 1: Well, I can't take him like that. It's against regulations.
NHS Patient: I don't want to go on the cart.
Doctor 2: Oh, don't be such a baby.
Doctor 1: I can't take him.
NHS Patient: I feel fine.
Doctor 2: Oh, do me a favor.
Doctor 1: I can't.
Doctor 2: Well, can you hang around for a couple of minutes? He won't be long.
Doctor 1: I promised I'd be at the Robinsons'. They've lost nine today.
Doctor 2: Well, when's your next round?
Doctor 1: Thursday.
NHS Patient: I think I'll go for a walk.
Doctor 2: You're not fooling anyone, you know. Isn't there anything you could do?
NHS Patient: I feel happy. I feel happy.
[Doctor 1 glances up and down the street furtively, then silences the Patient with his a whack of his club]
Doctor 2: Ah, thank you very much.
Doctor 1: Not at all. See you on Thursday.
Doctor 2: Right.

Doctors everywhere have been deciding when patients are beyond their care since the beginning of doctors. The Liverpool Care Pathway is a uniform lowering of that standard and, like other NHS decisions, was imposed on the people of Britain without their consultation or consent.