Socialized Medicine Sentencing People To Death In U.K.

The Telegraph.com has an article which describes how seriously ill patients are given virtual death sentences under the United Kingdom's socialized medicine system.

The article reads in part:

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

This is something to keep in mind as the Obama Administration and Democrat leftists in congress are trying to ram through a single-payer system of socialized medicine here. This could be a reality here if Obamacare is passed. That's why there is an uproar over the Obamacare "death panels" provision.

To read the full article, go here.