> [I]n the UK they won't pay for dialysis after a certain age
This is completely WRONG, there are NO age-related limits for treatment like this in the UK. Dialysis is a life-saving procedure for those with kidney failure, and is available to everyone in the UK who requires it regardless of age. The same goes for heart surgery, bypass operations, stents etc. which are also sometimes claimed to be age restricted.
The fact that people actually believe that a cruel system like this (one that would cause people to die by withholding treatment just because of their age) might really exist probably says much more about the way US health care works and the perceptions surrounding it.
I am actually from Germany and heard the story about NHS dialysis many years ago, so it has nothing to do with US right wing propaganda or whatever. My apologies, though, if it isn't correct.
Nevertheless I think there will always be procedures that won't be paid for, in any health care system, because it would always be possible to incur arbitrarily high costs. As an extreme example, you could assemble a team of 1000 scientists to try to cure one person.
That's interesting, I assumed it was a solely US belief, and certainly there have been plenty of scare-story emails circulating there regarding NHS and ACA. Obviously NICE [0]
(National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) does make calculations about when and what treatment should be given or withheld, using a system called QALYs [1] (Quality Adjusted Life Years) to attempt to ethically and deterministically decide this, which will always cause some people to be unhappy, unfortunately.
This is completely WRONG, there are NO age-related limits for treatment like this in the UK. Dialysis is a life-saving procedure for those with kidney failure, and is available to everyone in the UK who requires it regardless of age. The same goes for heart surgery, bypass operations, stents etc. which are also sometimes claimed to be age restricted.
The fact that people actually believe that a cruel system like this (one that would cause people to die by withholding treatment just because of their age) might really exist probably says much more about the way US health care works and the perceptions surrounding it.