Well, what other conclusion can you draw from this:
"Thousands of older cancer patients are being denied potentially life-saving surgery because of ageism in the NHS."
As we've documented countless times before, the Much Vaunted National Health System© consistently looks for ways to ration care to its elderly population. Certainly, this is an easy (if morally bankrupt) way to rein in runaway health care costs, but it should certainly give pause to those proponents of Obamacare© who are themselves reaching maturity.
Or are just closing in on it:
"The chances of being operated on start falling in middle-age and plummet for those in their 70s and older ... They reinforce evidence showing older people still get a raw deal from the ‘institutionally ageist’ NHS[sic]"
And that's not all: in those cases where local expertise is lacking, few elderly patients are being referred to other experts. Recognizing that Brits lag far behind us in cancer survival rates, lead researcher Mick Peake acknowledges that "internationally our biggest gap in terms of survival is in the elderly," adding "if you can give a seventysomething-year-old ten or 15 years of active life, you should certainly offer it to them."
Or not.
At the risk of emulating a broken record, I would remind our readers that this is the system which "Sir" Donald Berwick (current CMMS honcho) advocates and admires.