Government-run Health Care: Former NHS director dies after operation is cancelled four times at her own hospital

"I am romantic about the [British] National Health Service [NHS]; I love it"  -- Dr. Donald Berwick, Barack Obama's head of Medicare

Former NHS director dies after operation is cancelled four times at her own hospital

A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation - at her own hospital.

Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex. But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.

Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust - the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

He said: 'I don't really know why she died. I did not get a reason from the hospital. We all want to know for closure. She got weaker and weaker as she waited and operations were put off.'

I know why she died. This is government-run health care. This is our future under ObamaCare. The long and unmistakable history of heavy regulation and price controls creates a system where denial of care is incentivized. And since there will always be arguments for and against essentially every treatment, every surgery, every prescription, a government-run system will find every excuse to deny care.

In the picture above you'll notice Margaret Hutchon's neglected, brown teeth. This is no more accidental than her death. Brits' poor dentition is a longstanding joke here in the states and it is sadly a direct result of their government-run NHS. Dentists have quotas for patient care and are not rewarded for providing care beyond that as they would be in a free market system. Dentists commonly refuse to see additional patients once they reach their quota. As a result, many poor Brits are forced to flee their homeland in desperate search of dental care. Hungary is a favorite destination.

So why is Barack Obama's Medicare chief "romantic" about the NHS?

"You cap your health care budget, and you make the political and economic choices you need to make to keep affordability within reach. You plan the supply; you aim a bit low; you prefer slightly too little of a technology or a service to too much; then you search for care bottlenecks and try to relieve them."

Your life-saving care should not be the government's "political and economic choice."