U.K. 'Death Panel' Condemns Woman to Starve to Death

COMMENTARY | The sad and horrible case of Rudi Hargreaves, a 22-year-old teaching assistant living in Hull, East Yorks, England, demonstrates once again the perils of turning over health care decisions to government bureaucrats, in this case the National Health Service.

Hargreaves is suffering from a rare ailment called gastroparesis which causes her stomach to be unable to digest food at a normal rate. As a result, she has lost enough weight to have been transformed from a full-figured woman wearing size 12 clothes to someone who looks like she was just released from a concentration camp.

Her condition can be treated with a procedure that costs 14,000 English pounds. However, Great Britain's National Health Service, which approves all medical procedures in that country, has denied her the treatment. In effect, Hargreaves is being condemned to starve to death by what amounts to a death panel, to coin a phrase first used by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

According to the Daily Mail, the response of the NHS sounds like the sort of bureaucratic jargon once satirized in the British television comedy "Yes, Minister."

"To date, the application in question has not been agreed as, crucially, insufficient supporting information has been provided to allow due consideration to take place.

"Any requested procedures must also fall in line with the provider trust's priorities for service development and delivery.

"The patient's clinician has been invited to provide the necessary clarification, receipt of which should enable the patient's case to be progressed within the PCT."

Translated into simple English, the agency is inviting Hargreaves to perform an unnatural act and then die.

It is hoped that the media firestorm will persuade the death panel to reconsider and grant Hargreaves' request to be allowed to live. However, her case raises a larger issue about what happens when faceless government bureaucrats are allowed to decide on matters of life and death. They tend to forget that there are actual human beings being affected by their numbers, protocols, and procedures.

The story of Hargreaves also serves as a warning for the United States. With Obamacare more unpopular than ever, a political struggle has been raging to repeal and replace it with a more free-market solution. If this does not happen, one can foresee the day where cases like Hargreaves' become all too common on this side of the pond. Unlike the instances in which private insurance companies commit these decisions, there is usually no appeal from the dictates of a government. Once the death panel turns one down, it is time to put one's affairs in order. That is a situation that would be good to avoid.

Source: Help me, I'm starving to death. Six stone woman with paralysed stomach is refused life-saving operation, Daily Mail, July 11, 2011