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Government-Run Health Care Kills Thousands
Liberals and Progressives have religious faith in government-run health care systems. I am sure, if left to their own ends, they would much rather prefer we adopt a single-payer system similar to the systems in the UK and Canada. Political necessity only permits a foot-in-the-door policy that mandates health care insurance for everyone. While these systems aren't as inefficient as the top-down single-payer systems (such as Medicare), the current bills passed in the House and Senate impose the heavy hand of the State into almost every dark corner of the health care system in America.
These government fundamentalists march to the canon and cry of the efficiency of government-run systems and mock for-profit systems for being inefficient and wasteful. Yet there is no area of economic activity that the government operates efficiently precisely because of the lack of discipline present in for-profit ventures. The USPS just announced they lost $238 million in 2009. Fedex and UPS were profitable.
The shibboleth of the inefficiency of capitalism has so often been proven wrong by economists on all sides of the spectrum that one can only conclude that these free market deniers are worse than ignorant: they choose power over efficiency. And that is what Hayek called "The Road to Serfdom." After all, it was the Marxists and Socialists who proved by their failures that the free market works.
It is useless to appeal to reason to these fundamentalists. Their quest for power is an end in itself and they won't relent.
What to do?
My suggestion is that we should use scare tactics and create an environment of fear and doubt about government health care plans. This is fair since Liberals and Progressives have been spreading falsehoods about the free market system for a hundred years. We have an advantage: we don't have to lie. The truth is scary enough.
Here are two frightening and disgusting articles that demonstrate what I am talking about. Don't tell me it couldn't happen here.
You might find this first article disturbing.
1,200 Needless Deaths
By Fay Schlesinger, Andy Dolan and Tim Shipman
Last updated at 1:45 PM on 25th February 2010
- Up to 1,200 patients died unnecessarily because of appalling care
- Labour's obsession with targets and box ticking blamed for scandal
- Patients were 'routinely neglected' at hospital
- Report calls for FOURTH investigation into scandal
Not a single official has been disciplined over the worst-ever NHS hospital scandal, it emerged last night.
Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care.
But none of the doctors, nurses and managers who failed them has suffered any formal sanction.
Indeed, some have either retired on lucrative pensions or have swiftly found new jobs.
Former chief executive Martin Yeates, who has since left with a £1million pension pot, six months' salary and a reported £400,000 payoff, did not even give evidence to the inquiry which detailed the scale of the scandal yesterday.
He was said to be medically unfit to do so, though he sent some information to chairman Robert Francis through his solicitor.
The devastating-report into the Stafford Hospital-shambles' laid waste to Labour's decade-long obsession with box-ticking and league tables.
The independent inquiry headed by Robert Francis QC found the safety of sick and dying patients was 'routinely neglected'. Others were subjected to ' inhumane treatment', 'bullying', 'abuse' and 'rudeness'.
The shocking estimated death toll, three times the previous figure of 400, has prompted calls for a full public inquiry.
Bosses at the Trust - officially an 'elite' NHS institution - were condemned for their fixation with cutting waiting times to hit Labour targets and leaving neglected patients to die.
But after a probe that was controversially held in secret, not a single individual has been publicly blamed.
The inquiry found that:
• Patients were left unwashed in their own filth for up to a month as nurses ignored their requests to use the toilet or change their sheets;
• Four members of one family. including a new-born baby girl. died within 18 months after of blunders at the hospital;
• Medics discharged patients hastily out of fear they risked being sacked for delaying;
• Wards were left filthy with blood, discarded needles and used dressings while bullying managers made whistleblowers too frightened to come forward.
Last night the General Medical Council announced it was investigating several doctors. The Nursing and Midwifery Council is investigating at least one nurse and is considering other cases.
Ministers suggested the report highlighted a dreadful 'local' scandal, but its overall conclusions are a blistering condemnation of Labour's approach to the NHS.
It found that hospital were so preoccupied with saving money and pursuit of elite foundation trust status that they 'lost sight of its fundamental responsibility to provide safe care'.
Health Secretary Andy Burnham accepted 18 recommendations from Mr Francis and immediately announced plans for a new inquiry, to be held in public, into how Department of Health and NHS regulators failed to spot the disaster.
But Julie Bailey, head of the campaign group Cure the NHS, condemned his response as 'outrageous' and backed Tory and Liberal Democrat demands for a full public inquiry into what went wrong.
Tory leader David Cameron said: 'We need openness, clarity and transparency to stop this happening again.' Gordon Brown described the scandal as a 'completely unacceptable management failure' and revealed that the cases of 300 patients are now under investigation.
He told MPs the Government was belatedly working on plans to 'strike off' hospital managers responsible for failures. The hospital could also lose its cherished foundation status.
Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said 'These awful events show how badly Labour has let down NHS patients. It should never again be possible for managers to put a tick in a box marked "target met" while patients are pushed off to a ward and left to die.'
The Francis probe was launched following a Healthcare Commission report on Stafford Hospital in March last year. It found that deaths at the hospital were 27 to 45 per cent higher than normal, meaning some 400 to 1,200 people died unnecessarily between 2005 and 2008.
Two weeks before the report's publication, the Trust's chief executive Martin Yeates was suspended. He eventually resigned in May after being offered £400,000 and a £1million pension pot.
The Francis report said staff numbers were allowed to fall 'dangerously low', causing nurses to neglect the most basic care. It said: 'Requests for assistance to use a bedpan or to get to and from the toilet were not responded to.
'Some families were left to take soiled sheets home to wash or to change beds when this should have been undertaken by the hospital and its staff.' Food and drink were left out of reach, forcing patients to drink water from flower vases.
While many staff did their best, Mr Francis said, others showed a disturbing lack of compassion to patients.
He added: 'I heard so many stories of shocking care. These patients were not simply numbers. They were husbands, wives, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandparents. They were people who entered Stafford Hospital and rightly expected to be well cared for and treated.'
Family who lost four loved ones
Kelsey Lintern was at the centre of one of the worst tragedies in the hospital’s appalling catalogue of failure.
She lost four members of her family within 18 months, her grandmother, uncle, sister and six-day-old baby.
Mrs Lintern, 36, almost became the fifth victim when a nurse tried to give her pethidine while she was in labour, despite her medical notes and a wristband clearly stating she was allergic to the drug.
The horrific story began in January 2007 when her baby daughter Nyah had to be delivered by her own grandmother because a distracted midwife was not looking.
The baby was not breathing but she was resuscitated, then discharged by a junior paediatrician just two days later, despite the family’s fears she was seriously ill.
She was not feeding properly and still appeared blue. She died four days later. A post-mortem examination revealed four holes in her heart. Mrs Lintern accepts that Nyah may have died in any case, but said the hospital should at least have ‘realised there was a problem’.
It was when she was in labour with Nyah that a nurse arrived with a syringe of potentially-fatal pethidine, oblivious to the fact Mrs Lintern was allergic to it.
In April 2007, Mrs Lintern’s sister, Laurie Gethin, 37, died of lung, bone and lymph cancer, which had taken 18 months to be diagnosed, even though she was displaying tell-tale symptoms.
Her body, with her eyes still open, was left on her blood-splattered bed in full view of other patients. Tests revealed that Mrs Gethin had ‘markers’ in her blood which can indicated cancer.
But it was only when she was sent for a scan at another hospital that tumours were discovered. Mrs Lintern’s uncle, Tom Warriner, 48, died in January 2008 after his intestine was accidentally pierced in an operation for bowel cancer.
A coroner ruled the death was accidental. That summer, her grandmother Lilian Wood Latta, 80, died hungry and dehydrated after suffering a stroke. She was left in her own excrement during her final days and the family said the dehydration was caused by staff failing to give her adequate fluids.
Mrs Wood Latta had been referred to the hospital by her GP after suffering a series of mini-strokes at home. She was moved between wards three times, and it was left to relatives to change her incontinence pads.
Her dying wish had been to see Mrs Lintern’s new baby Khalen, so, after checking with staff, Mrs Lintern took her daughter in. But as the frail pensioner held her great-grandchild, a nurse appeared and said: ‘What on earth is a baby doing here? You do know we’ve got MRSA and C-Diff on this ward?’
Mrs Lintern, who lives in Cannock, Staffordshire, with husband David and their two daughters, said: ‘It is called the caring profession. But where is the care?’
James Reay died in agony after a junior doctor at Stafford Hospital failed to check his medical history and gave him the wrong drug.
The 67-year-old former miner was admitted to A&E in May 2006 with a swollen leg. Medics administered the anticoagulant Heparin – but failed to take into account Mr Reay’s history of stomach ulcers, which are known to react badly to the drug.
Two days later he was rushed to another hospital where he died from internal bleeding after three weeks of intense pain. Yesterday his widow Olwen won afive-figure pay-off in an out-of-court settlement after Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust admitted liability.
Mrs Reay, 69, said: ‘I have won my case but to me it is blood money and I cannot enjoy it. I would rather have my husband.’
With a background in the hotel and catering industry, Martin Yeates was brought in to help Mid Staffordshire achieve the holy grail of foundation trust status as a supposed beacon of quality in the NHS.
A profile on the Trust’s website, since removed, boasted that he had developed ‘a more businesslike approach for the organisation’ after his appointment in September 2005.
The Trust finally achieved foundation status two years later. Mr Yeates’s career in the NHS began when he switched from the hotel trade to manage the catering department at Walsgrave Hospital in Coventry in 1977.
It has now ended with a £1million pension pot, six months salary and a possible £400,000 pay-off for the father of two – despite the Trust’s catastrophic failings.
Mr Yeates, who lives with second wife Lynn in a converted barn in a hamlet outside Stafford, was not at home last night and a neighbour said he had not been seen since Christmas.
It is believed he has spent at least some time in Egypt since being suspended on full pay of £169,000 in March last year – two weeks before an investigation revealed the deaths of at least 400 more patients than would have been expected, and an ‘appalling’ catalogue of failings in care.
Yesterday’s inquiry report said Mr Yeates resigned with effect from June 14, and was paid six months full salary in lieu of notice.
In his report, Mr Francis said Mr Yeates had failed to resolve ‘governance and staffing issues’ at the Trust and that he and colleagues had ‘focused on systems’ instead.
Of the other Trust bosses, former chairman Toni Brisby resigned in March last year after the NHS watchdog Monitor said it intended to remove her. She told the Francis report she received no termination payment of any kind. Jan Harry, the trust’s director of nursing from 1998 to 2006, oversaw disastrous changes to the organisation of wards.
But she told the inquiry she could not recall a decision to axe 52 nursing posts and was ‘not aware’ of plans to drastically alter the ratio of trained to untrained staff. She also said it was not her job to monitor ward standards – a claim later described as ‘absurd’ by Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing.
Helen Morrey, former director of operations at the trust, admitted that risk assessments about the impact of job cuts were inadequate and accepted responsibility for a failure to thoroughly investigate complaints by patients. She was put on paid leave last July, before leaving the trust in November.
You don't have a choice other than the National Health System unless you are rich. In a free market system, you could sue and drive the bad hospitals out of existence. Or you could go somewhere else. Thus the free market corrects its mistakes. Very difficult in the UK. I do think that our legal system is too liberal with awards in medical malpractice cases, but the idiots in the Republican Party see "malpractice reform" as a cost cutting measure. You can hate the lawyers, but remove them, and there is nothing between us and Leviathan.
This next article will repulse you because of the hypocrisy of it.
Canadian Legislator Goes to Miami for Heart Surgery
By Tara Brautigam (CP) February 22, 2010
An unapologetic Danny Williams says he was aware his trip to the United States for heart surgery earlier this month would spark outcry, but he concluded his personal health trumped any public fallout over the controversial decision.
In an interview with The Canadian Press, Williams said he went to Miami to have a "minimally invasive" surgery for an ailment first detected nearly a year ago, based on the advice of his doctors.
"This was my heart, my choice and my health," Williams said late Monday from his condominium in Sarasota, Fla.
"I did not sign away my right to get the best possible health care for myself when I entered politics."
The 60-year-old Williams said doctors detected a heart murmur last spring and told him that one of his heart valves wasn't closing properly, creating a leakage.
He said he was told at the time that the problem was "moderate" and that he should come back for a checkup in six months.
Eight months later, in December, his doctors told him the problem had become severe and urged him to get his valve repaired immediately or risk heart failure, he said.
His doctors in Canada presented him with two options - a full or partial sternotomy, both of which would've required breaking bones, he said.
He said he spoke with and provided his medical information to a leading cardiac surgeon in New Jersey who is also from Newfoundland and Labrador. He advised him to seek treatment at the Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami.
That's where he was treated by Dr. Joseph Lamelas, a cardiac surgeon who has performed more than 8,000 open-heart surgeries.
Williams said Lamelas made an incision under his arm that didn't require any bone breakage.
"I wanted to get in, get out fast, get back to work in a short period of time," the premier said.
Williams said he didn't announce his departure south of the border because he didn't want to create "a media gong show," but added that criticism would've followed him had he chose to have surgery in Canada.
"I would've been criticized if I had stayed in Canada and had been perceived as jumping a line or a wait list. ... I accept that. That's public life," he said.
"(But) this is not a unique phenomenon to me. This is something that happens with lots of families throughout this country, so I make no apologies for that."
Williams said his decision to go to the U.S. did not reflect any lack of faith in his own province's health care system.
"I have the utmost confidence in our own health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador, but we are just over half a million people," he said.
"We do whatever we can to provide the best possible health care that we can in Newfoundland and Labrador. The Canadian health care system has a great reputation, but this is a very specialized piece of surgery that had to be done and I went to somebody who's doing this three or four times a day, five, six days a week."
He quipped that he had "a heart of a 40-year-old, so that gives me 20 years new life," and said he intends to run in the next provincial election in 2011.
"I'm probably going to be around for a long time, hopefully, if God willing," he said.
"God forbid for the Canadian public I won't be around longer than ever."
Williams also said he paid for the treatment, but added he would seek any refunds he would be eligible for in Canada.
"If I'm entitled to any reimbursement from any Canadian health care system or any provincial health care system, then obviously I will apply for that as anybody else would," he said.
"But I wrote out the cheque myself and paid for it myself and to this point, I haven't even looked into the possibility of any reimbursement. I don't know what I'm entitled to, if anything, and if it's nothing, then so be it."
He is expected back at work in early March.
At least he admits that the Canadian system isn't very good. His lack of faith in his own system speaks volumes. Where will he go when we destroy the best health care system in the world?
P.S. Please see my response to the comments, below.
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Your system works well in, as you say, a sparsely populated country.
Comparisons of Canada or England or practically any other country on earth, to the disUnited States, are naive, ridiculous and dangerous.
No one on earth has attempted to take care of the medical needs of 370,000,000 people, growing to 450,000,000 and then half a billion.
No one.
No one on earth has attempted to take care of the medical needs of 370,000,000 people, growing to 450,000,000 and then half a billion.
Whoa, slow down! Sounds like what yous really need is socialized condom distribution :)
I am Canadian but have not been following the Williams' story too closely. Did he want or did he need the procedure? If he needed the procedure but it was not available in Canada then would not our government healthcare cover the cost stateside? On the otherhand Mr. Williams is a billionaire so he can pretty much afford to do whatever he wants when it comes to his personal well being.
I think the best form of health insurance in this country (or anywhere) is to look after your own health. Eat properly. Sleep properly. Don't smoke. Drink responsibly (if you must). Exercise moderately and everything else will, 9 times out of ten, take care of itself. Of course we all get old and die but we need not be a burden on the system if we exercise moderation in all things and take care of ourselves and our loved ones.
Personally I have family members whose experience with our much vaunted public health care system has been less than encouraging. Technically the system may appear wonderful but wait until you have to use it before judging it to be a success.
Stating that liberals pine for single-payer health care for its efficiency is a ridiculous straw man. If you actually see anyone claim this, they're likely unfit to take part in the debate.
Actually, the most intelligent of the liberals in my circle recognize that such a systems carries with it greater inefficiencies. However, these inefficiencies are just collateral damage for providing better care to those who can least afford it.
You are absolutely right about the straw-man. This article is written for the pre-brainwashed, to reinforce their delusion that big pharma/insurance controlled healthcare in the US isn't actually a massive fraud at their expense.
A state-run system like the NHS does has some "inefficiencies" from a corporate perspective, because they are not run to maximise profit, but to provide healthcare!
However, the NHS also has one huge "efficiency" over the US system (which isn't often mentioned), that of leverage over big pharma companies/doctors - a sort of collective bargaining power which patients in the US do not have, (who are utterly are their own, fighting the medical system and big pharma, as well as the insurance companies).
This is why patients in the US spend so much more than in other developed countries yet have a lower life-expectancy.
It's pretty bad here when you enter a for profit Hospital and have to remind the Drs. and the Nurses to wash their fucking hands. I had a good friend who went through three months off Chemo Hell only to die from Hospital Infections because the Drs. are too busy seeing as many as they can a day to make as much as they can and don't seem to think touching a person who has zero immune system after having hands on Patients with various disorders is going to cause a problem.
As reform gets close and bills go through reconciliation the scare mongers are at this . What this bill is getting down to is getting Insurance companies to pay their fucking claims. That's it. You can still die from the infections because it does nothing to the provider side , except the insurance company will have to pay the bills that the hospital sends for killing you. Your family won't get squeezed to death by the Hospital Collections dept.
"Think twice, does he really need a Casket?"
The Post Office? Maybe they wouldn't lose money if they stopped delivering letters to everyplace in the country 56 days a week. Then people would scream about how to send registered collection letters from the hospital on Saturday when it really scares people.
To the asshole who wrote this garbage. Even if 1200 people really did die, they got nothing on the 45,000 who die without insurance here and the untold 10s of thousands who die from infections or under insurance. All this bill does is let you in the hospital. If you don't have friends who can call a nurse when you code in ICU or stop a Dr from bringing in his filthy hands, might as well take the 29 cent Smith And Wesson all in one Health Care remedy.
Go plaster this shit on Redstate or a Teabagger special.al
It's always easier to sing to the choir.
Sorry, but the NHS is anything but efficient. The patient treatment standards that exist in NHS facilities don't exist by and large in American not-for-profit and for-profit hospitals. Government run facilities, like the VA, are more like the NHS than they are like their counterparts in America.
Life expectancy at birth is longer in the UK. But life expectancy after you've reached the 30 year plateau is equivalent, and each successive age grouping sees longer life expectancy in the US.
Government has all the benefits of not paying property taxes on its facilities, not paying for insurance, and in some cases exempting itself from rules it foists on its private sector competition. It also isn't required to pay taxes on its operating profits. Yet somehow, Medicare and similar goverment run programs run operating deficits year after year. And the solution is to expand this system to everyone, nationwide? Private run enterprises certainly have their faults, but turning over the system to government, where it will be operated as another spoil to be delivered to the most favored, is not a good answer.
God forbid we should subsidize low cost clinics.
Bollocks this is not the NHS I recognize....Remember Dick Cheney thinks state provided medical care is great too and your tax $'s are currently paying to keep the cunt alive
Many of those in the UK (that are lucky enough to still have a job) have access to a private alternative as a perk through their employers if they want it. However I would be wary of staying over night in one their "hospitals".
Finally if the US has the "finest health care system in the world" why does it keep negligence lawyers so busy? The Staffs case that you refer to is symbolic of the neo-con Labour government's obsession with "targets" and cronyism
Having been a victim of the medical system, and a reject from the tort system (no lawyer would take the case) from personal experience I can safely say that there is no correlation between the mistakes boneheaded, drug-addicted, monomaniacal doctors make and the finest health care system.
What lawyers do is cherry pick cases, many hundreds of thousands more going without representation because they are tough, responsibilty too diffuse. (Hospital staff, environment, microbes)
Having said that, I am alive BECAUSE one doctor managed to catch the 9-month undiagnosed problem in the nick of time.
Without his dedication, Johns Hopkins training and the efforts of similarly trained highly paid Infectious Disease department, this missive would not be written.
We do have the BEST system in the world for tough cases, and we do have ambulance chasing lawyers who are after chasing big buck cases when many millions of much smaller awards go unclaimed for lack of representation.
I wouldn't trade it for any other sysetm, anywhere with all its warts.
I can guarantee I wouldn't be alive if I had lived in Canada then. Which may make my enemies happy, but me unable to defend the system we have here.
No one said anything about the state of John Hopkins which is one of the best. You don't think for a second everyone has access to the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic or John Hopkins do you? So why not tell us which insurance plan you were on that had John Hopkins in their network plan ?
John Hopkins is in a league of its own. One of the best. I also know of a friend and his brother that had mercury poisoning and almost died then ended up going to John Hopkins and they were able to identify what other doctors missed.
Dick Cheney is a state-worshipping Trotskyite socialist known as a "Neoconservative".
At least there's a risk of a hospital getting sued for letting patients lie in their own shit for over a month. Purhaps the bedsheets would have been changed if the hospital was motivated by the "profit-and-LOSS model". I guess we'll never know.
Hhm, not sure that private care is really better than public care. Employees of the former may be better motivated because of the bucks they can earn with all these sick people and the fear of bad publicity, lawsuits and the costs (loss of their profits) associated with both. So its pure selfishness that drives them.
Employees of the latter are overworked because of all the cuts going on not because they would care less about their patients. Plus, since they are not motivated by earnings they don't have to prescribe unnessary treatments.
"Plus, since they are not motivated by earnings they don't have to prescribe unnecessary treatments."
Nor are they motivated by prescribing necessary treatments. They get paid the same whether a patient lives or dies, and there's little to no legal recourse for those victimized by a government-run system. That's where the difference lies.
In any case, we can't really call the American system a "free market". We have a single-payer system in this country (Medicare) right alongside a heavily regulated private sector. The former cost shifts billions of dollars to the latter (due to rationed reimbursements to doctors and hospitals), while the excessive government regulation stifles innovation, discourages competition, and prevents cheap insurance alternatives from entering the market.
Free markets will work once we allow them to. This means the elimination of Medicare and other government subsidies, and the lifting of regulations on the insurance market.
Bollocks this is not the NHS I recognize....Remember Dick Cheney thinks state provided medical care is great too and your tax $'s are currently paying to keep the cunt alive
Many of those in the UK (that are lucky enough to still have a job) have access to a private alternative as a perk through their employers if they want it. However I would be wary of staying over night in one their "hospitals".
Finally if the US has the "finest health care system in the world" why does it keep negligence lawyers so busy? The Staffs case that you refer to is symbolic of the neo-con Labour government's obsession with "targets" and cronyism
"why does it keep negligence lawyers so busy?"
Because the plaintiffs bar has bought and paid for the most corrupt Congress its money can buy. Don't you even think of defending the bastards, you cunt.
Actually, it's Big Pharma & Big Insurance who corrupted congress; "Stop making shit up."
Gary Null has a study- you can google it- where he has looked at the relative safety of our present healthcare system and found that medical error was far more responsible for patient death than cancer or cardiovascular disease.
".....medical error was far more responsible for patient death than cancer or cardiovascular disease."
Thank you for breaking through the group-think to point out the fallacy of "quality care" our present system is supposedly providing. Take a look at staff infections per admission or re-hospializations after discharge for some horror stories. There are good doctors and hospitals out there but no one for a minute should ever forget that health care is a for-profit industry run by administrators and corporate bean counters who are rewarded for money saved. Lives saved is a side benefit, not a principal goal. Though if you listen to the industry propaganda, that's all they ever think about.
I'm not beating on the countless tens of thousands of individual health care providers working long hours in understaffed hospitals, clinics and private practices. If you sit those people down and conduct a heart to heart interview with no fear of retribution, you will be regaled with one horror story after another of botched diagnosis, improper drug doses and switched drugs, distracted doctors and nurses and chronic shortages of everything.
Considering 20% of the US GDP pays for heath care, one wonders where the money is going. Take a gander at where the US stands compared to the rest of the world in quality of care and outcomes and you will find the US is consistently near the bottom of the list for developed nations and often flirting below under-developed nations.
Follow the money boys, follow the money.
Econophile,
Only ideology masquerading as analysis. Nothing new here that's not overflowing in Washington these days.