Show me the [Pounds Sterling]

My first reaction on reading the following was disbelief at the incredible cynicism inherent in the Much Vaunted National Health System©. But then I recalled this and it began to make sense:

"Hospitals are paid millions to hit targets for the number of patients who die on the Liverpool Care Pathway ... In some cases, hospitals have been set targets that between a third and two thirds of all the deaths should be on the [Pathway]"

Yes, you read that correctly: the MVNHS© has actually begun (continued?) to set death quotas. When one considers the ObamaTax Independent Payment Advisory Board Death Panel, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to see this idea taking hold here.

The rationale, of course, is that killing patients denying treatment is an efficient cost-savings measure. Turns out, though, not so much:

"At least £30million [about half a million dollars] in extra money from taxpayers is estimated to have been handed to hospitals over the past three years"

That's quite an incentive to shunt folks off the care line, no? And recall that "[m]edicine has always been more of an art than a science," and it becomes increasingly clear just how easy - and profitable - it becomes to just pull the plug.

Fortunately, only a very few folks end up on there, right?

Sorry:

"LCP is thought to be used in more than 100,000 cases a year"

Ouch.