Dr. Crippen frets about the upcoming prior approval process in the NHS:

This is about preventing you from getting hospital care. It is saying that your GP is no longer allowed to arrange for you to see a specialist without “prior permission” from the “PCT Exceptions Panel”. And who will sit on this panel? It will be all the usual suspects. All those plausible mediocrities who pop up on these committees time after time. The dead wood of nationalised industry bureaucracy. Doctors who have not seen a patient in years, over-promoted nurses who have not seen a patient in years, and second rate bureaucrats who have never seen a patient and who are working in the public sector because no one in the private sector would employ them. Yes, there are one or two notable exceptions, but that is about the size of it. Actually, it does not matter who sits on these wretched committees, because although they sit under the banner of “decision making”, their real mission is delay and deferral.

This has been going on Stateside for years with HMOs. Anyone who thinks “Medicare for all” means less prior approvals and paperwork, think again – the government can change all of that in a hurry.