Not the NHS's finest hour

The Times has this chilling report from England:

THE National Health Service should not have to give life- prolonging treatment to every patient who demands it because that would mean a crippling waste of resources, the Government said yesterday.
A lawyer for Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, said that a ruling granting a patient the right to request life-prolonging care had serious implications for the NHS.
The dramatic intervention came as lawyers for the General Medical Council challenged a High Court ruling that supported a terminally-ill man’s wish to be kept alive artificially.
Leslie Burke, 45, who suffers from cerebellar ataxia, a degenerative brain condition, won a landmark case last May granting him the right to stop doctors withdrawing artificial nutrition or hydration (ANH) treatment until he dies naturally.
The Department of Health, backing the GMC’s attempt to reverse the ruling, said that if that right were established, patients could demand other life-prolonging treatments. The department argues that this will create a culture in which patients request treatments “no matter how untested, inappropriate or expensive, regardless of doctors’ views”.
Philip Sales, for the Health Secretary, told a panel of three appeal judges, headed by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers: “A general right, as identified (in the High Court), for an individual patient to require life- prolonging treatment has very serious implications for the functioning of the NHS.
“It may be interpreted as giving patients the right to demand certain treatments, contrary to the considered judgment of their medical team, that would lead to patients obtaining access to treatment that is not appropriate for them, and to unfairly skewed use of resources within the NHS.”

If this sort of "battlefield triage medicine without the battlefield" (the politest term I can think of for this sort of attitude) is the end product of government-run socialized medicine, I'll take the supposedly "heartless" American system anyday. (Hat tip: Clayton Cramer.)