IF NICE and the ‘NHS health reformers’ have their way, free health care at the point of need is destined for the dustbin of history, in favour of medical manslaughter based on the cost of treatment.
This committee that decides which drugs are too expensive for the NHS to use, is now moving on and is seeking to decide which lives are too expensive to save.
It is also seeking to abolish the ‘Right to Rescue’ which requires that people facing death should be treated regardless of the costs.
In fact the NICE ruling that saving a life cannot be justified at any cost, has been opposed by its own ‘Citizens Council’ who are there to represent the feelings of the general public which depends on the NHS.
There is a proviso, of course.
If the sick person or his or her relatives and friends decide that they have enough money for private treatment, to keep the sick person alive, or cure him or her outside the NHS, then life becomes sacred once again, but only for the person with the cash. Life saving is to become a cash question, just like it is in the United States.
Nice when it enunciates that saving human life has got a pound or dollar cost limit sign rubbishes the Hippocratic oath and returns to the survival of the financially fittest.
The Committee however when it states people ‘should not expect the NHS to save their life if it costs too much’, and that the NHS should not always attempt to save someone’s life, is merely revealing the logic behind the entire NHS reform and privatisation programme.
This logic is essentially that crisis-ridden capitalism cannot afford a National Health Service that treats all at the point of need without payment, and is financed through national taxation.
Closing down dozens of District General Hospitals is all about cost. They cannot be replaced by a non-existent care in the community or by private polyclinics.
Closing down Accident and Emergency, and Maternity departments, and replacing fully trained ambulance staff with partly trained operatives will cost lives. The line is that this will have to be done if NHS treatment for a number of complaints is to be retained.
The report accepts that where individuals are in ‘desperate and exceptional circumstances’ they should sometimes receive greater help than can be justified by a ‘purely utilitarian approach’.
Of course where all of the A and Es are shut down and the nearest one is 50 or so miles away, the ‘purely utilitarian approach’ will not count for much. it is being accepted that in the future many more NHS patients will be allowed to die.
NICE is following the course that is being charted by the Brown government, and all future capitalist governments that only the rich have the right to all of the health care that they need.
The same government that is allowing NHS patients to die, has handed over £100 billion to the banks and is committed to unconditional financial aid for the future.
This is the real reason why the NHS is to be slashed and more patients allowed to die.
The government cannot both save capitalism and the NHS, and we all know which it has chosen to try and save!
It is the NHS that must be saved and it will be done with socialist policies.
The Brown government must be brought down and be replaced by a workers government.
This will nationalise the drug industry, abolish its fabulous profits, and thereby cut the cost of NHS treatment by many tens of billions of pounds.
The establishment of a socialist foreign policy will mean that the defence budget can be slashed and the building of nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers and missiles be cancelled.
The banks instead of being propped up at vast expense must be nationalised, a decision that will save many more billions.
It is capitalism that must be denied ‘the right to rescue’ not the NHS. NHS patients must have the right to life. We must go forward to socialism.