The British NHS Is One Giant Death Panel

Here's the craziest thing you'll read all day, and maybe for several days...remember that whole thing with the Lockerbie bomber, Megrahi, who was perversely released by the Scottish government?  Yeah, well, the political angle is superseded in ridiculousness by the healthcare angle.

Karol Sikora, a leading cancer specialist who examined Megrahi shortly before his release, explains that predicting how long a patient with end-stage prostate cancer has to live is "a value judgment of probability," not an exact science. But Dr. Sikora also writes that his initial three-month prognosis was "based on his treatment as an NHS patient in Glasgow at the time, when not even standard docetaxel chemotherapy was offered." By contrast, "Mr. Megrahi almost certainly had excellent care in Tripoli."

Think about that one: Get treated for cancer by the U.K.'s National Health Service, and you'll be dead by Christmas. But get treated for the same cancer in Libya, and you may have years to live. No wonder Americans are terrified of government-run medicine and rationing boards.

Yikes.