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Health Freezes Over
The London Telegraph is reporting that the doctors believe "smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations."

Perhaps the doctors are following the lead of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the British agency that provides guidance on public health. In 2005, NICE proposed that the National Health Service use age as a measurement of a patient's worthiness for treatment.

The reason for the hard hearts in Britain: The NHS can no longer afford to provide free treatment for everyone.

For Britons, health care rationing isn't just a threat. It's a reality. The Telegraph says roughly one in 10 hospitals — usually those with financial problems — now deny some surgery to smokers and the obese.

On a moral level, the doctors have a point: Taxpayers shouldn't have to subsidize care for those who make poor choices and then expect others to pay for their mistakes.

But that's exactly what universal health care does, and that's one of its primary flaws. It promises people that they'll be cared for no matter what they do to themselves. When the consequences of bad behavior are eliminated, there's a strong incentive to behave badly.

The threat to cut benefits to the old and the unhealthy in Britain is a clear confirmation that health care can never be free. Someone has to pay for it, and those people in Great Britain are so stretched that they can't meet every demand.

The threat also shows that health care can't be truly universal, at least not for the long term, because it becomes too costly to maintain as such. The belief among so many that care is free because there are no payments at the point of use only inflates demand....