Socialized Medicine: Handing Out Premature Death Sentences

No, this is not a scare-tactic. It is a bonafide news item from the Daily Telegraph over in the United Kingdom.

From Kate Devlin:

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death. Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

I've actually seen this done in the United States. My family requested that my father be kept sedated until he passed. But we already knew that there was no hope for his recovery and we wanted to make sure that he did not become conscious or feel any pain.

That isn't always the case over in Britain.

Read on:

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

There is a major difference in a family making a decision and a doctor following a government guideline that was hammered out by bureaucrats who had never been to medical school or even knew the first thing about any particular patient.

Here is the real kicker:

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong. “As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients."

When the government pays the bills, the government makes the decisions. That is what makes socialized medicine so unpalatable to Americans. We want as little government as possible in our lives. Dems and libs seem to have a great deal of difficulty understanding that.

But, even more importantly, it highlights the "end-of-life" concerns that people like Sarah Palin and others have expressed over the past few months:

The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours. Developed by Marie Curie, the cancer charity, in a Liverpool hospice it was initially developed for cancer patients but now includes other life threatening conditions. It was recommended as a model by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s health scrutiny body, in 2004. It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.

But there are major pitfalls in determining whether a patient is actually entering their final hours. Medications can cause unresponsiveness or unconsciousness. Dehydration can lead to symptoms completely unrelated to the patient's primary ailment.

Further, poor care can lead to other conditions that can be mistaken for signs of impending death.

As a result, many people are put on the Pathway prematurely.

Just another wonderful contribution to medical care from the practitioners of socialized medicine.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Sentenced To Death On The NHS
Kate Devlin
Daily Telegraph
September 2, 2009

Cruel And Neglectful Care Of One Million British Patients Exposed

There must be something in the water over in the United Kingdom these days. Lately, there seems to be no end of news items exposing how poorly the socialized health care system they have is serving its intended goals. That is to say, NHS is shaping up to be a huge failure.

From Rebecca Smith of the Telegraph UK:

In the last six years, the Patients Association claims hundreds of thousands have suffered from poor standards of nursing, often with 'neglectful, demeaning, painful and sometimes downright cruel' treatment. The charity has disclosed a horrifying catalogue of elderly people left in pain, in soiled bed clothes, denied adequate food and drink, and suffering from repeatedly cancelled operations, missed diagnoses and dismissive staff. The Patients Association said the dossier proves that while the scale of the scandal at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust - where up to 1,200 people died through failings in urgent care - was a one off, there are repeated examples they have uncovered of the same appalling standards throughout the NHS.

Those who read my blog on a regular basis know very well what the mention of Mid-Staffordshire refers to.

And I cannot stress enough that if this had happened here in the United States, it would be the lead story for CNN and the front-page headline for the Washington Post and New York Times for at least a month-running.

Here are some more examples of how a socialized haelth care system would treat its patients, especially those for whom care is to be rationed:

Pamela Goddard, a piano teacher from Bletchingley, in Surrey, was 82 and suffering with cancer but was left in her own excrement and her condition deteriorated due to her bed sores. Florence Weston, from Sedgley in the West Midlands, who died aged 85, had to remain without food or water for several days as her hip operation was repeatedly cancelled.

Treatment of seniors under any socialized health care sytem is especially bad, and would still be bad under a U.S. socialized health care system.

Socialized health care has been a disaster everywhere it has been tried. We do not want to bring that disaster here to America.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

'Cruel And Neglectful' Care Of One Million NHS Patients Exposed
Rebecca Smith
The Telegraph
August 27, 2009

Man Collapses With Ruptured Appendix ... Three Weeks After (British) NHS Doctors 'Took It Out'

The hits just keep on coming from Great Britain's National Health System (NHS). In this case, a man went in for an apendectomy, and a month later, after his appendix had supposedly been removed, his appendix ruptured, endangering his life and leaving him in intense pain.

From Daniel Bates at the UK Daily Mail:

After weeks of excruciating pain, Mark Wattson was understandably relieved to have his appendix taken out. Doctors told him the operation was a success and he was sent home. But only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance. To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured - a potentially fatal complication. In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.

Wow! Such efficiency in socialized medicine, isn't there? But, all sarcasm aside, this is yet another in a long line of oversights (many of which resulted in the death of the patient) inflicted by the NHS on the people of Great Britain.

More:

The blunder has left Mr Wattson jobless, as bosses at the shop where he worked did not believe his story and sacked him. ... Following the second operation his incision became infected and he was admitted to hospital for a third time for treatment. He said: 'I had a temporary job at a sports shop but when I took in two medical certificates saying I had my appendix out twice they didn't believe me. 'Now I'm helpless. I can't go out and find a job, I can't go to interviews, I can barely walk and am in constant pain. Before the first operation they told me I had to have my appendix removed and when I woke up afterwards they said it had been a complete success.

So, not only did the NHS doctors have to go in a second time, but the second incision got infected too?

If this had happened in the United States, Mr. Wattson would be on the verge of becoming very rich due to the lawsuits that would be filed against the doctors and hospital.

So, what did the NHS overseers have to say about the whole, sorry affair?

Paul Gearing, deputy general manager for general surgery at Great Western Hospital NHS Trust, said: 'We are unable to comment on individual cases. 'However, we would like to apologise if Mr Wattson felt dissatisfied with the care he received at Great Western Hospital.'

No, I don't think it was "dissatisfaction" Mr. Wattson was feeling. It was intense pain because the NHS medical system that was supposed to take care of him failed miserably, just like a typical socilized medical system.

You can access the original article on-line here:

Man Collapses With Ruptured Appendix ... Three Weeks After NHS Doctors 'Took It Out'
Daniel Bates
UK Daily Mail
August 26, 2009

More Reasons Why We Do Not Want Socialized Medicine

My son was born in December of 2008. We had the plans made long beforehand. And since it was to be an induced labor, we already had the hospital, staff and emergency contingencies all lined up before we even left home that morning. For us, it was no more difficult than planning a vacation.

When I contrast that experience with what I read in the following news story, I thank God that my family and I live in America and not Great Britain.

From Jenny Hope and Nick McDermott of the UK Daily Mail:

Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds. The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets - even a caravan - went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000. Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.

Again, I have to point out that if something like this ever happened in the United States, it would be the lead story on CNN and the front page story in the Washington Post and New York Times for at least a month.

While it is true that not all births occur in hospitals (babies have their own schedules regardless of what the parents planned), the fact that women in labor are being turned away by hospitals even though Great Britain's National Health Service promises timely care for all, is a scandal all unto itself.

More:

Additionally, overstretched maternity units shut their doors to any more women in labour on 553 occasions last year. Babies were born in offices, lifts, toilets and a caravan, according to the Freedom of Information data for 2007 and 2008 from 117 out of 147 trusts which provide maternity services. One woman gave birth in a lift while being transferred to a labour ward from A&E while another gave birth in a corridor, said East Cheshire NHS Trust. Others said women had to give birth on the wards - rather than in their own maternity room - because the delivery suites were full. Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997. At the same time birth rates have been rising sharply - up 20 per cent in some areas.

Shut their doors to women in labor? Women giving birth in toilets?

Is that the utopia of socialized medicine that was promised to the British people?

I dare say it isn't. And I also say that I don't want such government-run travesties over here on this side of the pond.

Read on:

'It shows the incredible waste that has taken place that mothers are getting this sort of sub-standard treatment despite Gordon Brown's tripling of spending on the NHS.

They tripled spending and they still turn women in labor away from hospitals? Where did all that money go? Who accounts for it all?

Yet another reason why we absolutely do not want socialized medicine in the United States.

You can access the complete atory on-line here:

The Babies Born In Hospital Corridors: Bed Shortage Forces 4,000 Mothers To Give Birth In Lifts, Offices And Hospital Toilets
Jenny Hope and Nick McDermott
UK Daily Mail
August 26, 2009

And here is another horror story for good measure:

Father Turned Away From Hospital With Pregnant Wife Delivers Baby On Bathroom Floor - And Saves His Daughter's Life
UK Daily Mail
August 18, 2009

Another Look At Socialized Medicine From A Canadian Doctor

I find it interesting that the Dems are all about looking to other nations when it comes to interpreting American law, but when it comes to socialized medicine, they want to ignore the experiences of other nations.

The Wall Street Journal has a column by Canadian-born physician Dr. David Gratzer concerning socialized medicine in his home country.

Here is what he has to say:

Born and raised in Canada, I once believed that government health care is compassionate and equitable. It is neither. My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.

Not just in Canada, but in Great Britain as well and any other country that practices socialized medicine. And the waiting is extremely detrimental to patients who need care as soon as possible:

The problems were brought home when a relative had difficulty walking. He was in chronic pain. His doctor suggested a referral to a neurologist; an MRI would need to be done, then possibly a referral to another specialist. The wait would have stretched to roughly a year. If surgery was needed, the wait would be months more. Not wanting to stay confined to his house, he had the surgery done in the U.S., at the Mayo Clinic, and paid for it himself. Such stories are common. For example, Sylvia de Vries, an Ontario woman, had a 40-pound fluid-filled tumor removed from her abdomen by an American surgeon in 2006. Her Michigan doctor estimated that she was within weeks of dying, but she was still on a wait list for a Canadian specialist. Indeed, Canada's provincial governments themselves rely on American medicine. Between 2006 and 2008, Ontario sent more than 160 patients to New York and Michigan for emergency neurosurgery -- described by the Globe and Mail newspaper as "broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain."

Why would we want to move to a system that is so inefficient and so low-quality? The failures of socialized medicine are myriad:

Only half of ER patients are treated in a timely manner by national and international standards, according to a government study. The physician shortage is so severe that some towns hold lotteries, with the winners gaining access to the local doc. Overall, according to a study published in Lancet Oncology last year, five-year cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. than those in Canada. Based on data from the Joint Canada/U.S. Survey of Health (done by Statistics Canada and the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics), Americans have greater access to preventive screening tests and have higher treatment rates for chronic illnesses. No wonder: To limit the growth in health spending, governments restrict the supply of health care by rationing it through waiting. The same survey data show, as June and Paul O'Neill note in a paper published in 2007 in the Forum for Health Economics & Policy, that the poor under socialized medicine seem to be less healthy relative to the nonpoor than their American counterparts.

Rationing. That's what socialized medicine comes down to. The government will decide who gets what treatment and when. That is the main reason why cancer survival rates are lower in places like Canada and Great Britain. Delayed detection and delayed treatment allows cancer to spread and grow in a patient until, in many cases, the treatment comes too late and the government then decrees that the patient is now a "hopeless diagnosis" and should be left to die.

But, it seems as though the people of Canada have learned their lesson. Dr. Gratzer asks a very profound question while presenting some good evidence that privatized medicine is the way to go. Make sure you read the following excerpt all the way through:

Ironically, as the U.S. is on the verge of rushing toward government health care, Canada is reforming its system in the opposite direction. In 2005, Canada's supreme court struck down key laws in Quebec that established a government monopoly of health services. Claude Castonguay, who headed the Quebec government commission that recommended the creation of its public health-care system in the 1960s, also has second thoughts. Last year, after completing another review, he declared the system in "crisis" and suggested a massive expansion of private services -- even advocating that public hospitals rent facilities to physicians in off-hours. And the medical establishment? Dr. Brian Day, an orthopedic surgeon, grew increasingly frustrated by government cutbacks that reduced his access to an operating room and increased the number of patients on his hospital waiting list. He built a private hospital in Vancouver in the 1990s. Last year, he completed a term as the president of the Canadian Medical Association and was succeeded by a Quebec radiologist who owns several private clinics. In Canada, private-sector health care is growing. Dr. Day estimates that 50,000 people are seen at private clinics every year in British Columbia. According to the New York Times, a private clinic opens at a rate of about one a week across the country. Public-private partnerships, once a taboo topic, are embraced by provincial governments. In the United Kingdom, where socialized medicine was established after World War II through the National Health Service, the present Labour government has introduced a choice in surgeries by allowing patients to choose among facilities, often including private ones. Even in Sweden, the government has turned over services to the private sector. Americans need to ask a basic question: Why are they rushing into a system of government-dominated health care when the very countries that have experienced it for so long are backing away?

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Canada's ObamaCare Precedent
Dr. David Gratzer
Wall Street Journal
June 9, 2009

UK Senior Judge: Nothing "Honorable" About Muslims Abusing And Killing Their Own Families

How many times have we read stories about "honor killings" or forced marriages or abuse of Muslim children? Far too many times.

I used to think that most (if not all Europeans) were simply too scared to speak out in the face of a Muslim culture that is coming to dominate them. Well, over in the United Kingdom, at least one sane, rational voice is speaking out. That voice belongs to Lord Justice Wall, a senior judge in the U.K. judicial system.

According to the Daily Mail Online:

Lord Justice Wall, giving a ruling on a case involving three Muslim children put in the care of white foster parents, said the time had come to 're-think the phrase honour killing'. He had heard that a mother had set fire to one of her three children and tried to burn down the house where they lived in an attempt to incriminate her sister-in-law. The sister-in-law 'presented a problem to the family' and had fled the home after being beaten and her first child murdered by her husband, the mother's brother. The judge said: 'The message from this case, which must be sent out loud and clear, is that this court applies a tolerant and human rights based rule of law: one which... regards parents as equals and the welfare of the child as paramount. 'That is the law of England, and that is the law which applies in this case. Arson, domestic violence and potential revenge likely to result in abduction or death are criminal acts which will be treated as such.' He said the activities brought to light by the case had 'nothing to do with any concept of honour known to English law'. 'They are acts of simply sordid, criminal behaviour and a refusal to acknowledge them as such.'

Wow! Those are some strong words and they are exactly the words that needed to be said. Two things to note:

1. Abuse and killing of family members has "nothing to do with any concept of honour known to English law."

2. The acts are "of simply sordid criminal behaviour."

That is stripping the issue down to the bare-bones essentials. Islamics who abuse and kill their own family members have no place in the civilized society of the West. That much is clear from point Number 1.

Point Number 2 serves as a reminder that moral relativism has no place in the application of laws and that all laws must be applied equally to all people across the board. As such, Muslims who abuse and kill their own family members should not be considered as adherents to a different set of beliefs, but merely common criminals who need to be held accountable and punished for their crimes.

How bad can it get? Read on:

The mother of the children - a girl aged 11 and boys of nine and five - is 32 and serving a five-year jail sentence for arson. One of her brothers had contracted a second marriage to a woman in Pakistan who came to England in 2003 pregnant with her first child. That child was taken to hospital aged 27 months suffering from multiple injuries and died. It was not known the motivation for the killing but among the injuries on the child were signs of chronic sexual abuse.

A 27-month-old child. That's not even three years. What motivates a person to physically harm a defenseless little human being like that?

I went to school here in the West and we were never taught to do anything like that. In fact, we were taught that such behavior is simply evil and that those who engage in such actions should be severely punished.

But, in certain Muslim cultures, such behavior is acceptable and encouraged and when it happens, is justified under Sharia law.

Now, I know some Muslims out there will complain that these people do not represent mainstream Islam. But my response to this complaint is that instead of berating people like me, they should go after these abusers and murderers and tell them to stop claiming to be acting in the name of Islam.

The people of Europe would do very well to listen to the admonitions of Lord Justice Wall. Maybe it's not too late yet.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Senior Judge Condemns Use Of The Word 'Honour' To Describe Abuse And Murder Within Muslim Families
Daily Mail Reporter
March 16, 2009

A Look At What's In Store For Us If We Adopt Socialized Medicine

Hundreds of horror stories about the absurdities and inadequacies of socialized health care are coming out of the United Kingdom and Canada. Well, we can add one more to the list.

This comes from David Altaner and Bruce Rule at Bloomberg:

Jack Rosser's doctor says taking Pfizer Inc.'s Sutent cancer drug may keep him alive long enough to see his 1-year-old daughter, Emma, enter primary school. The U.K.'s National Health Service says that's not worth the expense.

If you read that right, then you know that under a nationalized health care system like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton envisioned, doctor's would not be making decisions but government bureaucrats would. The above shows exactly how heartless such a nationalized system really is.

More :

The NHS, which provides health care to all Britons and is funded by tax revenue, is spending about 100 billion pounds this fiscal year, or more than double what it spent a decade ago, as the cost of treatments increase and the population ages. The higher costs are forcing the NHS to choose between buying expensive drugs for terminal patients and providing more services for a wider number of people. About 800 of 3,000 cancer patients lose their appeals for regulator-approved drugs each year because of cost, Canterbury- based charity Rarer Cancers Forum said. The U.K. is considering whether to make permanent a preliminary ruling that four medicines, including Sutent, are too expensive to be part of the government-funded treatment of advanced kidney cancer.

There is a reason why the U.K. is in last place among the industrialized nations for cancer survival rates. Delayed detection and delayed treatment of various diseases and conditions are part and parcel to a socialized health care system. Government run health care offers too little too late.

And this telling fact illustrates what people in the U.K. really feel about the NHS:

South Gloucestershire, the trust that includes Rosser's home, accepts applications for Sutent funding only for exceptional cases, said Ann Jarvis, director of commissioning at the trust, in an e-mail. "Unfortunately for very expensive drugs, if they are proven to only provide a small benefit we have to prioritize other treatments."

The people joke, "We don't have socialized health care, we have rationed health care."

Yes, they do. And we do not want it over here. It is a disaster.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Cancer Patients Lose Shot At Longer Life In U.K. Cuts
David Altaner and Bruce Rule
Bloomberg.com
November 18, 2008

And there is more information at the following website:

Big Government Health

And learn some not-so-well known facts about government run health care:

Learn The Facts