This paper examines a recent rationing crisis in the UK National Health Service (NHS) in which a patient was denied treatment for a life threatening illness on the basis of cost. Rationing is inevitable in health care, as resources which can be allocated to health are finite and demand is essentially infinite. The new managerial relationships which constitute the purchaser/provider split contribute to rationing becom ing more explicit. The NHS is socialist in that it socialises the financial risk of illness.
Questions about the form which rationing should take are funda mentally political rather than empirical. Yet the media purvey a version of reality which is best understood as myth. The paper con cludes by raising these crucial questions in the context of the politics of the left.
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