There's absolutely nothing wrong with rationing healthcare on the grounds of cost/benefit: more to the point, there's absolutely no alternative to doing so without devoting 100% of GDP to healthcare.

Inevitably, taking decisions like this one will mean that some people will die who otherwise wouldn't have done - but that *more* people will survive who otherwise wouldn't have done.

As with cost/benefit decisions on whether to build bypasses to save lives, whether to impose safety regulations to save lives, etc, it's not particularly comfortable to say "we're going to take this decision in the knowledge that it will lead to certain people dying".

However, this is a reason to admire, not slag off, the people who are willing to take such responsibilities.

> There's absolutely nothing wrong with rationing healthcare on the grounds of cost/benefit

I didn't say there was. I said that the GMC aren't supposed to be the people doing it. Those who hold the pursestrings sometimes have to make such dreadful decisions. Your doctor has sworn the Hippocratic Oath and is supposed to be the one fighting your corner — not the one going to court to fight for the right to kill you.

You have also missed the implications of this point:

> If a treatment would save your life but would be too expensive for the government, the GMC want your doctor not even to tell you about it.

If your doctor tells you there's a treatment available but that it's too expensive for the NHS, then you have the option of going private. If they don't tell you the treatment exists because it's too expensive for the NHS, then you don't even know you have the option. That way, people who can afford and are willing to pay for the care that would save them will still die, because their GP won't tell them the treatment exists.

Oh, and, by the way, when individual Americans decide that they'd rather not buy health insurance for a couple of years and spend the money on something they think is more important, left-wingers don't say "There's absolutely nothing wrong with rationing healthcare on the grounds of cost/benefit." They tell us that the number of uninsured people in the US is an appalling indictment of all that's wrong with American healthcare; that it's a humanitarian disaster. So is it only OK for the government to make these decisions for you, then, and not OK for you to make them for yourself?

"There's absolutely nothing wrong with rationing healthcare on the grounds of cost/benefit"

But they are not talking about health care. They are talking about food and water, without which all of us, healthy or not, would soon die.

It is, as Mr. Squander says, utterly and totally disgusting. And frightening. And...unsurprising.

This is what happens when you let the State think it owns everyone and everything.

If they don't tell you the treatment exists because it's too expensive for the NHS, then you don't even know you have the option. That way, people who can afford and are willing to pay for the care that would save them will still die, because their GP won't tell them the treatment exists.

I suspect they do this already and that may be one of the reasons the GMC have waded in.

Ahh...the right to death...gotta love it.

But the patient cannot require his doctor to offer him any treatment option which, in the doctor’s view...cannot be offered for other reasons - having regard to the efficient allocation of resources within the NHS.

Now, would I be asking too much of doctors, if I expected them to concentrate on the needs of their current patient, and not second-guess whether everybody else who requires the services of the NHS, whose cases the doctor is not considering at that time, might need treatment that supposedly has to be conserved for the benefit of all present and future patients, but instead will merely be used for the sake of one individual, out of millions? Because there's no way 'might need' should be considered before 'evidently does need'.

There's nothing about that statement that wouldn't justify a doctor turning down treatment to every patient he dealt with, on the grounds that it would deplete NHS resources. After all, the best way to ensure that doesn't happen is to horde said resources, never actually using them.

Yes, I know that in real life, the NHS as a whole will never take that idea to it's logical conclusion. But I wonder if doctors are get the idea of using that as a justification for denying treatment to the odd patient. It is a perfectly unassailable excuse, and if they felt the need to, it would make it easier to shame patients out of pursuing the matter further. 'You are depriving others of treatments they might need! You silly, greedy so-and-so!'

Now I know the true meaning of 'publish and be damned',

'if doctors are get the idea'='if doctors are going to get the idea',

I agree with John B that’s there’s nothing wrong with rationing health care. I also agree with S2 that this is rather different.
My comment on first seeing this a few days ago was that what with the assisted suicide discussion going on apparently we should have a right to die but not a right to decide to live.