It's been going on for a while. Two of my friends had their care rationed back about eight to ten years ago. One was a woman of 70 who had a severely infected gall bladder, and was told she was too old to be allowed the surgery even though she would die without it. Her kids managed to pull together enough money to give her the surgery for her birthday present. The other was a man of 42 or so who developed stomach cancer, and was told that since he had only a 10% chance of cure he couldn't get treatment. Luckily he was a small business owner and was able to sell his business to raise the money for his surgery. Both of them are still living.

I was thinking of the sort of blatant triage that can't be practiced now due to public outcry. As in, "Sorry, you're over 70 and this illness is difficult to treat, so you get no treatment. You've lived long enough."