By Wesley J. Smith, J.D., Special Consultant to the CBC

The UK’s rationing board, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) wants doctors to use more pain control. From the BBC story:

NICE wants doctors in England and Wales to make more use of morphine and other strong opioids — the only adequate pain relief source for many patients. The guidelines recommend doctors discuss patients’ concerns. These may include addiction, tolerance, side-effects and fears that treatment implies the final stage of life.

That’s nice, and why aren’t doctors doing that anyway?

But, I’m sorry: This is no way to run a railroad. Doctors shouldn’t constantly have to look to central control to determine how to treat individual patients. Unless we give Obamacare the boot, we will have our own NICE technocrats telling our doctors what to do — and more insidiously, what not to do — from the bowels of the DC bureaucracy.

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