Health Care by Computer Has Failed in the UK

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 18, 2009 6:19 PM CDT
Health Care by Computer Has Failed in the UK
President Barack Obama.   (AP Photo)

Like all liberals, President Obama likes big, controlling systems. Like British politicians, he hopes to manage health care with a nationwide supercomputer. As Britain failed, so too will the United States, Fraser Nelson and Irwin M. Stelzer write in the Weekly Standard. Not only has Britain's medical database failed after years of hard work and $7.4 billion in taxpayers' money, it manages patients' health care in horrifying ways.

Want an expensive drug to arrest macular degeneration? Until recently, Britons first had to be blind in one eye. Already paying for life-prolonging cancer drugs? British health care won't have anything to do with you. It's a rationing system that has led to an equally messy computer system that fails to replace doctors' good sense. Britain's failure contains "a lesson for the world," write Nelsona and Stelzer: "Abandon hope all ye who enter here." (More health care stories.)

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