Here's what America can look forward to if it follows the NHS model, according to an investigation by the Sunday Telegraph...

"Plans to cut hundreds of thousands of pounds from budgets for the terminally ill, with dying cancer patients to be told to manage their own symptoms if their condition worsens at evenings or weekends." Never has "take two aspirin and call me in the morning" sounded more callous.

Nursing homes for the elderly would be closed, the number of hospital beds for the mentally ill reduced and general practitioners would be discouraged from sending patients to hospitals. Accident and emergency department services would also be cut.

Thousands of jobs would be lost at NHS hospitals, reports the Telegraph, "including 500 staff to go at a trust where cancer patients recently suffered delays in diagnosis and treatment because of staff shortages." Katherine Murphy of the Patients Association called the cuts "astonishingly brutal."

She expressed particular concern at attempts to ration (that word again) hip and knee operations. "These are not unusual procedures," she said. "This is a really blatant attempt to save money by leaving people in pain."

What do politicians care about that? In Britain, as in America, top officials (including Berwick, who has lifetime health coverage given to him by the Institute for Health Care Improvement) will always have access to the best care, even while they decide the rest of us cannot.

This paragraph in the Telegraph story should send chills down the spine of every American: "Doctors across the country have already been told that their patients can have the operations only if they are given 'prior approval' by the Primary Care Trust, with each authorization made on a 'case by case' basis."

When cost, rather than the value of life, becomes supreme, rationing will inevitably lead to other cost-cutting policies. And yes, despite protestations from those who favored Obamacare that "death panels" would not be part of the equation, you can count on them.

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