Failure to quit smoking before certain elective procedures confers such clinical detriment that to proceed to surgery is ill judged. When all other clinical features are identical, costs are increased and outcomes are worse in a smoker than in a current non-smoker. In healthcare systems with finite resources, preferring non-smokers over smokers for a limited number of procedures will deliver greater clinical benefit to individuals and the community—smokers and non-smokers. To fail to implement such a clinical practice in these select circumstances would be to sacrifice sensible clinical judgment for the sake of a non-discriminatory principle.
And just in case you don't believe doctors in England would deny care to a smoker, read this:
A man with a broken ankle is facing a lifetime of pain because a Health Service hospital has refused to treat him unless he gives up smoking.
John Nuttall, 57, needs surgery to set the ankle which he broke in three places two years ago because it did not mend naturally with a plaster cast.
Doctors at the Royal Cornwall Hospital in Truro have refused to operate because they say his heavy smoking would reduce the chance of healing, and there is a risk of complications.
I'm certainly no expert on Health Insurance, but it just seems to me that if we allow the government to control Health Care, it will be hard to stop them from controlling aspects of our lives that affect our health. And really, what aspects of our lives don't affect our health.
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