In my other life I am a finance professor in a business school. Most of my colleagues are socialists. No surprise, after all: Where are these people to go now that their collective utopias around the world have pretty much collapsed?

I put these folks in two groups. The first are economic illiterates who actually think they can dramatically redistribute income and regulate the economy without any deadweight loss. The second group understands that dramatic income redistribution will significantly shrink the size of the economy but think that is OK. All that matters is that we are equal and if we have to be equally poor to accomplish it is worth the price.

Maybe the UK Health Service is run by people who think in that way. See below:Debbie Hirst’s...breast cancer had metastasized, and the health service would not provide her with Avastin, a drug that is widely used in the United States and Europe to keep such cancers at bay. So, with her oncologist’s support, she decided last year to try to pay the $120,000 cost herself, while continuing with the rest of her publicly financed treatment. By December, she had raised $20,000 and was preparing to sell her house to raise more. But then the government, which had tacitly allowed such arrangements before, put its foot down. Mrs. Hirst heard the news from her doctor. "He looked at me and said: 'I'm so sorry, Debbie. I’ve had my wrists slapped from the people upstairs, and I can no longer offer you that service,'"Mrs. Hirst said in an interview. "I said, 'Where does that leave me?' He said, 'If you pay for Avastin, you’ll have to pay for everything'" — in other words, for all her cancer treatment, far more than she could afford.

Officials said that allowing Mrs. Hirst and others like her to pay for extra drugs to supplement government care would violate the philosophy of the health service by giving richer patients an unfair advantage over poorer ones.