Suppose you are in Britain and you need a life-saving cancer drug or a medical test the government refuses to provide.  Answer for thousands of patients: pay for the item yourself.  But the (anything-but-compassionate) Labor government is now saying: not so fast.  Play by our rationing rules or pay for the whole shebang.  A New York Times story tells of a woman, who was willing to pay $120,000 for the cancer drug, Avastin (which the National Health Service refused to pay for).  Initially, she was told she would have to pay for the entire cancer treatment, if she paid privately for the drug.  After bad publicity, the government relented. 

This is an interesting posting from Jonah Goldberg on The National Review's Corner blog:

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.  Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge.  The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls.

Doctors warned last night that the practice of "patient-stacking" was putting patients' health at risk.  Figures obtained by the Liberal Democrats show that last year 43,576 patients waited longer than one hour before being let into emergency units.