More on the “don’t get sick” in a socialized medicine country

One of Obama’s (and Clinton’s) many sins is the desire to nationalize medicine, so that the government gets to decide who deserves treatment and who doesn’t.  Britain, as always, serves as a useful horrible example of what can happen under such a system:

A 61-year-old grandmother has been denied vital heart surgery for being too old – despite the guideline being out of date.

Dorothy Simpson branded NHS chiefs “heartless” after they claimed the operation should only be carried out on people aged 60 and under.

But her own specialist said he wrote the guidelines three years ago and that they had now been superseded by national guidelines, which set no age limit.

Dorothy, of Thirsk, North Yorkshire, has suffered from an irregular heartbeat for three years, which is having an increasingly debilitating impact on her life.

But NHS managers in North Yorkshire have so far refused to fund a £5,000 operation to treat the problem – despite patients older than her in Teesside, less than 30 miles away, having the treatment.

On a completely unrelated point, I’ve been in Thirsk, Simpson’s home, which when I saw it was not only a charming northern village, but was also home to James Herriott.