I know some people are mocking the term “death panel” as it applies to government run health care, but sadly the term is a good summation of what happens when faceless bureaucrats dole out treatments based on cost and not need.

What is just ridiculously ironic is how the UK and Canadian models of government run health care are falling apart at the same time as mindless liberals are pushing for that same health care nightmare to come to America.

A study out in January 2008 claimed that the UK’s National Health System allowed 17,000 people to die unnecessarily from poor treatment – making this one of the largest crimes of medical malpractice I think I have ever seen in my life:

More than 17,000 people receiving treatment in the UK have died unnecessarily because of the inadequacies of the NHS, it is claimed today.

The figure, in a paper published by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, is calculated using data given to the World Health Organisation. It compares the number of people who died prematurely, even though their illness was treatable, in five European countries.

The NHS performs worse on this measure of “mortality amenable to healthcare” than Spain, France, the Netherlands and Germany. If it had achieved the average of those four, 17,157 fewer deaths would have occurred in 2004, the most recent year for which the data is available, says the alliance.

That is more than five times the death toll from road accidents, says the alliance, which claims that the extra money for the NHS from the Labour government has been wasted.

Emphasis mine. Would America stand for a health care system which causes more deaths than automobile accidents? What kind of crock of a system is this? If you read the whole article the UK doesn’t even deny the claim!

Update: More heartening news about the NHS – ugh.

Update: Even more great news:

Data collected by the National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA) shows that 1,282 people in England died in what it calls “patient safety incidents in mental health settings” in the period 2007-08.

…

Campaigners claimed last night that the high death rates showed that many of the hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people who seek help each year receive a second-class service.

“These figures are shocking. It’s a scandal that four people a day are dying while under the care of the NHS, and nearly three a day are ending up seriously harmed.

And the liberals wonder why the ‘public option’ is DOA.

Update: Oh Cananda – you too?

Dix said a Vancouver Coastal Health Authority document shows it is considering chopping more than 6,000 surgeries in an effort to make up for a dramatic budgetary shortfall that could reach $200 million.

Delays in treatment usually result in greater damage to the body, leading to shorter life. That is a scientific and medical fact.

Tags: Obamacare