Don't treat the old and unhealthy, say NHS doctors

You've paid for your health insurance all your life only to be told you can't collect on it when you need it? That's a risk you take with socialism. And it's already happening to some extent in Britain

Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives. Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone. Fertility treatment and "social" abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.

The findings of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as "out-rageous" and "disgraceful". About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt. Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money.

The Government announced plans last week to offer fat people cash incentives to diet and exercise as part of a desperate strategy to steer Britain off a course that will otherwise see half the population dangerously overweight by 2050. Obesity costs the British taxpayer 7 billion a year. Overweight people are more likely to contract diabetes, cancer and heart disease, and to require replacement joints or stomach-stapling operations.

Meanwhile, 1.7 billion is spent treating diseases caused by smoking, such as lung cancer, bronchitis and emphysema, with a similar sum spent by the NHS on alcohol problems. Cases of cirrhosis have tripled over the past decade.

Among the survey of 870 family and hospital doctors, almost 60 per cent said the NHS could not provide full healthcare to everyone and that some individuals should pay for services. One in three said that elderly patients should not be given free treatment if it were unlikely to do them good for long. Half thought that smokers should be denied a heart bypass, while a quarter believed that the obese should be denied hip replacements. Tony Calland, chairman of the BMA's ethics committee, said it would be "outrageous" to limit care on age grounds. Age Concern called the doctors' views "disgraceful".

Gordon Brown promised this month that a new NHS constitution would set out people's "responsibilities" as well as their rights, a move interpreted as meaning restrictions on patients who bring health problems on themselves. The only sanction threatened so far, however, is to send patients to the bottom of the waiting list if they miss appointments.

The survey found that medical professionals wanted to go much further in denying care to patients who do not look after their bodies. Ninety-four per cent said that an alcoholic who refused to stop drinking should not be allowed a liver transplant, while one in five said taxpayers should not pay for "social abortions" and fertility treatment.

Paul Mason, a GP in Portland, Dorset, said there were good clinical reasons for denying surgery to some patients. "The issue is: how much responsibility do people take for their health?" he said. "If an alcoholic is going to drink themselves to death then that is really sad, but if he gets the liver transplant that is denied to someone else who could have got the chance of life then that is a tragedy." He said the case of George Best, who drank himself to death in 2005, three years after a liver transplant, had damaged the argument that drinkers deserved a second chance.

However, Roger Williams, who carried out the 2002 transplant on the former footballer, said doctors could never be sure if an alcoholic would return to drinking, although most would expect a detailed psychological assessment of patients, who would be required to abstain for six months before surgery. Prof Williams said: "Less than five per cent of alcoholics who have a transplant return to serious drinking. George was one of them. It is actually a pretty successful rate. I think the judgment these doctors are making is nothing to do with the clinical reasons for limiting such operations and purely a moral decision."

Katherine Murphy, from the Patients' Association, said it would be wrong to deny treatment because of a "lifestyle" factor. "The decision taken by the doctor has to be the best clinical one, and it has to be taken individually. It is morally wrong to deny care on any other grounds," she said.

Responding to the survey's findings on the treatment of the elderly, Dr Calland, of the BMA, said: "If a patient of 90 needs a hip operation they should get one. Yes, they might peg out any time, but it's not our job to play God."

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The Massachusetts mess

A further comment -- by Bob Parks

So let me get this straight.. The cost of Massachusetts' health insurance mandate will rise 85 percent, or $400 million, next year. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who rammed this down all of our throats, won't have to answer for all this because the Mass healthcare plan doesn't fully go into effect until after the presidential election. How convenient. Tell everyone how great the plan, you stuck your old state with after you left office, is.

As it turns out, the same Mitt Romney who claims to be a Reagan conservative has left an already cash-strapped state with the inevitability of increased taxes to cover the additional costs of his national healthcare model. It's a shame we didn't parse his words like we did Bill Clinton. Sure, the plan didn't require a raise in taxes while he was governor. The plan wasn't in place yet. Romney said.

"I'd say each state needs to get busy on the job of getting all our citizens insured. It does not cost more money."

Nothing from Mitt about tort reform. One of the reasons healthcare costs are so high is that doctors have to carry outrageous amounts of malpractice insurance to protect themselves from people like John Edwards. That cost, along with the annual amounts of near-unfettered fraud, is always passed down to the consumer.

Also remember, there was a time when many of us didn't have health insurance. I can only remember going to the hospital or a clinic once or twice during my childhood. We didn't have helicopter moms taking us into the doctor's office as soon as our noses started running or our tummies hurt.

As a Massachusetts resident who saw the man in action, I told you Mitt Romney comes off as a phony, thus it's hard to believe anything the man says while in election mode. From a speech posted on Mitt's own website he said.

"Healthcare is not a Democrat issue. It's a Republican issue; it's a conservative issue. Democrats look at problems like this and they have one answer: government. `We need bigger government, they say, so we can manage problems like this.' That's the wrong answer. Conservative principles have the answer for health care."

He listed them off as "personal responsibility, free market dynamics, choice", and being able to do all this without a government takeover. Well, aside from throwing his conservative principles under the bus, we sure are as close as we'll ever get to a government healthcare takeover. How do we know this? Private industries seldom require tax increases.

Maybe it's just that I never knew what real conservatism was, but I was always under the impression that real conservatives were for government that didn't impose itself in our lives. I guess Mitt Romney has proven us wrong.

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