[jerod]

So this very young man obviously didn't meet the criteria requirement.... If only he had lived another 16 weeks... He would've been golden.

I hope he had a stiff one before he kicked it.

[Cicero]

I guess Hitler would have said that he was a “useless eater.”

[ClearCase_guy]

I like a system where you get the level of medical care for which you have paid. If the medical care is "free" then it will necessarily be rationed. And if you have to deprive someone of a liver transplant, then the binge drinker who blew out his first liver at age 22 seems like a reasonable place to draw the line, if a line must be drawn.

[sickoflibs]

entertaining but is there a moral to this story? Dont drink yourself to death in England?

[Crazieman]

Thats not socialized medicine. We won’t even give livers to heavy drinkers.

They’re in universal short supply. Socialized or not.

[jiggyboy]

In fact this is the CORRECT way to ration healthcare.

[Conscience of a Conservative]

This has nothing to do with socialized medicine - the same thing would have happened here. Transplant organs are in very short supply, and transplant patients are prioritized in any system, socialized or not. Transplant clinics (and insurance companies) here in the U.S. generally will not perform (or pay for) liver transplants without a period of sobriety of 6 months to a year (and many locations/insurers will not perform/cover any liver transplant that results from alcohol abuse.

[KarlInOhio]

The flip side of the question is whether someone else should have died without a liver transplant to give this lush one. Unlike MRI machines or hospitals (if you don't have enough then build more) transplant organs are rationed because of the number of usable ones donated. If two people need them now and there is only one, someone has to ration it one some criteria whether by expected survival, immediate need, cash bidding, or a scalpel duel in the operating room where two walk in and one is wheeled out with a new liver.

[stephenjohnbanker]

If you don’t live your life the way big brother says you must, you die.

[denydenydeny]

In fairness, these are normal criteria for organ transplants, not particularly different from the ones we have in place here in the USA or any other developed country.

[The Great RJ]

I knew a nephrologist who left medical practice in the UK who used to tell his colleagues in the US that socialized medicine will mean rationing of kidney dialysis. In the UK the number of dialysis machines was strictly limited and doctors had to make decisions as to who would get treatment and who would die of kidney failure.

[Ramius]

Even if he started drinking at 13, it seems unlikely that cirrosis would develop far enough to kill him by 22. That’s pretty fast. The quantities of alcohol would have to be completely off the chart. Even then, I wonder if there was something else going on.

[Dan Middleton]

Terrible example to use for the case against socialized medicine. This guy essentially killed himself, and there are strict standards for organ donation in our system as well because there’s a limited supply of organs.

[the long march]

He died due to severe alcoholism. He had more than enough stiff ones ( as you so blythely call them)to land him in the hospital. I will put money on this not being his first hospitalization. He surely has suffered with pancreatitis and alcoholic gastritous at a minimum. Alcoholism kills people. It is not something to be so friggin flip about

[odin2008]

[SJSAMPLE]

I seriously wonder if this guy would get a liver in the US, anyway.
My wife’s a nurse, and I helped her reseach her final paper on the US organ donor and procurement “system”.
He sounds like an extremely low priority candidate, if he’d even be allowed on the list.

Then again, Mickey Mantle got a new liver.
Ya never know.

[Hoodat]

I took classes at UCL and had to walk by this hospital two times each day. There literally was a line out the door each morning. I learned more about socialized medicine right there than I ever could listening to the Ted Kennedys of the world.

I had said for years that the day Ted Kennedy admitted himself into DC General for his health care would be the day I supported socialized medicine. Needless to say, that day never came.

[RepublitarianRoger2]

So he drank himself to death and he wasn’t bumped up ahead of other folks on the liver-transplant waiting list. Sounds about right to me. Really bad example to use to attempt to make a case against socialized medicine.

[CurlyDave]

The US currently has similar criteria.

I had a good friend who was alcoholic, but damaged his liver due to another condition, hemachromatosis.

He had to meet strict alcohol criteria but eventually got his transplant. Our system was actually worse than the UK one in that his insurance company was fighting against him, hoping he would die before they would have to pay for the operation.

[popdonnelly]

In other words, the British government killed him. Too bad he was only 22, and hadn’t lived much.

[Lx]

Steve Jobs managed to get a liver even after there were reports that his pancreatic cancer had metastasized throughout his body; is that fair? I hope Jobs lives a long time but there is a large void between who gets scarce organs.