The Telegraph has the weekly (or is it daily now) horror story from the UK's National Health Service.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across Britain to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a "national crisis" in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke's cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

"Forecasting death is an inexact science,"they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death "without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong. 

Imagine you've recovered from a near death experience only to find the nurse is withholding fluids and lifesaving drugs. Too weak to speak but still conscious you feel the prick of the needle as the sedatives are injected. When cost savings become the main driving force in a government program this is what you get.

With socialism the individual doesn't count, it comes down to what is best for society. If these old sick people would just die a little quicker more money would be available for the "productive" members of society.

Do we really want to start down that slippery slope, who's next? The severely handicapped, the mentally challenged.

The typical liberal who gets all her news from the MSM and knows for a fact that Rush and Hannity are hate mongers (even though she has never listened to talk radio) is genuinely perplexed at the health care protesters, a common refrain you hear is: "They don't know what's good for them."

Yes, we do know what's good for us and it's not turning over our health care to the same people who run the post office and Amtrak.