Would Ted Kennedy get Care in the NHS?

Rumor has it that Massachusetts Senator Ed Kennedy would have been turned down for treatment of his malignant glioma if he was a UK citizen and thus subject to evil death panels sponsored by the British National Health System.

And the corollary is that, if the Big O's proposed health reform plans ever make it to a hospital near you, the same fate will befall any US citizen who develops brain cancer.

In addition to making the rounds on righty talk radio, this nonsense has filtered across the pond and now the Brits are quite beside themselves, if you must know.

To be sure, UK citizens have turned complaining about the NHS into an art form. They winge continually about wait times and MRSA-ridden hospitals, for example.

But such gripes are for them to make only, they believe, because the National Health Service is the nearest thing Brits have to religion, and slime-jobs emanating from a former colony aren’t going to cut it.

Hamish Meldrum, the chairman of the British Medical Association, told the Washington Post last week that he is deeply disturbed by the "jaw-droppingly untruthful attacks" on the NHS that have come from the American right.

And about the 77 year-old Senator’s brain cancer claim for example, a British Health Department spokesperson said, "That's just wrong. The NHS provides health services on the basis of clinical need, irrespective of age or ability to pay."

But the rhetoric continues. The right-leaning Club for Growth just launched a TV ad campaign, for example, in which the number $22,750 appears beneath photos of Big Ben and an ill-appearing woman in a hospital bed.

The voiceover states, "In England, government health officials decided that's how much 6 months of life is worth. Under their socialized system, if a medical treatment costs more, you're out of luck. That's wrong for America."

"Untrue," responds Andrew Dillon of NICE responds. NICE is the NHS agency charged with assessing costs and benefits of medical therapies, a role Obama has tasked the AHRQ and the NIH to do for the Stars and Stripes under the comparative effectiveness scheme which has been covered in this blog here, here and here.

"We don't put a limit on the amount the NHS can spend on an individual patient," Dillon said.