When Sarah Palin said Obama’s healthcare plan would result in “death panels” that would see bureaucrats making subjective judgements on life and death, she was  furiously howled down by Obama supporters.

So how should we describe the expert panel of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, which decided that patients will be denied a new cancer drug on the NHS under draft guidelines, because it is too expensive?

Charities are outraged people with advanced liver cancer are to be refused life-extending Nexavar.  Andrew Dillon, of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said: “The drug does not provide enough benefit to justify its high cost.”

Andrew Dillon, the CEO of N.I.C.E., is a career bureaucrat, not a doctor or a scientist.  He runs the system that says there is a cap of £30,000 per patient for a quality year of life.  If the panel determines that a “quality year of life” will cost the NHS more than £30,000, you are dead…