Story here in the UK Times. (H/T ECM)
Excerpt:
Patients were routinely neglected or left “sobbing and humiliated” by staff at an NHS trust where at least 400 deaths have been linked to appalling care.
An independent inquiry found that managers at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust stopped providing safe care because they were preoccupied with government targets and cutting costs.
Staff shortages at Stafford Hospital meant that patients went unwashed for weeks, were left without food or drink and were even unable to get to the lavatory. Some lay in soiled sheets that relatives had to take home to wash, others developed infections or had falls, occasionally fatal. Many staff did their best but the attitude of some nurses “left a lot to be desired”.
The report, which follows reviews by the Care Quality Commission and the Department of Health, said that “unimaginable” suffering had been caused. Regulators said last year that between 400 and 1,200 more patients than expected may have died at the hospital from 2005 to 2008.
Andy Burnham, the Health Secretary, said there could be “no excuses” for the failures and added that the board that presided over the scandal had been replaced. An undisclosed number of doctors and at least one nurse are being investigated by the General Medical Council and Nursing and Midwifery Council.
[…]Some NHS chief executives have received six-figure redundancy packages or moved to other trusts despite poor performance. Martin Yeates, the former chief executive at Mid Staffordshire, received pay rises that took his annual salary to £180,000, while standards at the trust deteriorated.
We need to learn from the experiences of other countries with socialism.
- How government-run health care leads to euthanasia
- NHS employees leapfrog their own waiting lists to access private health care
- NHS delays treatment for broken arm for four months and counting
- One in six patients misdiagnosed by NHS
- The deadly consequences of rationing health care
- Health care in Britain: question a doctor and lose your children
- How death panels work in the British health care system
- One million NHS patients receive brutally inadequate health care
- 4000 NHS patients denied hospital beds to give birth to children
- Woman gives birth on pavement after NHS refuses to send an ambulance
- NHS hospitals infested with a dozen varieties of vermin
- 39-year old woman is prescribed painkillers and dies after 11-minute NHS exam
- UK National Health Service refuses to pay for lower-back painkillers
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Hi Wintery:
Just wondering what kind of health insurance you have and whether you are satisfied with it.
Thanks!
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I have a high-deductible flexible spending account. (FSA) I like it because it forces me to be responsible with my eating, exercising and decision making. And I invest all the money from having a plan that emphasizes personal responsibility for my retirement. If single payer health care were passed, I would be paying tens of thousands of dollars for things I would never need. In Canada, I would pay for contraceptives, drug needles elective abortions, sex changes, in vitro fertilization, etc.. Additionally, breast enlargements are covered in the UK. When government runs health care, the loudest groups get their needs paid for.
You know I’d like to get married. If single-payer health care were passed, my plan to marry would be severely impacted. All the good decisions I made would be dashed, because I would be forced to pay for the bad decisions of my neighbors even more than I already do. And the social programs would only encourage to make worse decisions by lowering the costs of those bad decisions. Women need to choose either marriage and children or dependency on the government. You all can’t have both. Either you want a husband and children or government-provided rewards for bad behavior. You can’t have both. A dollar can only be spent one way. Either the government spends it, or the family does. You must choose.
Note: I am in favor of mandatory health insurance coverage for all, but purchased on the free market with no mandated minimum coverages or state regulations: choice and competition. I also favor subsidies for the poor to purchase health care plans like mine, as well as mandatory catastrophic coverage for conditions that are not the result of poor choices. I deliberately made the provocative statements about to shock.
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Oh come on! All the cool kids are into socialism! Don’t you want to be cool, Wintery?
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SIR, NO, SIR!
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What about Jesus? How would you classify his telling the rich man to sell all that he had and give it to the poor.
Isn’t that income redistribution and socialism in its purest form?
And what about the good Samaritan paying for a complete neighbor’s care? More of the same. No?
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Can you understand the difference between individual charity on a voluntary basis and government-controlled redistribution of wealth on an involuntary basis? Can you show me where the government is in the two examples you cited?
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We’re back to taxes, yes?
Well Jesus paid his. Why do you think? Do you think he went and looked at all the programs on the books before he did that? You think he wasn’t aware of all the problems with government and people being in need and also corruption in high and low places? Of course he was. And yet he paid and went about his business, that being giving to people who needed it, healing people, giving them comfort, teaching. He wasn’t dispensing charity.
[SNIP off topic stuff]
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Jesus paid his taxes, but he didn’t marry either. That’s my policy as well.
“And yet he paid [taxes] and went about his business, that being giving to people who needed it, healing people, giving them comfort, teaching. He wasn’t dispensing charity.”
So you think that when Jesus voluntarily gave care to the poor and sick, that this wasn’t actually individual charity but it was actually a government-run social program paid for with his tax money? Not trying to be mean, just trying to understand you.
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You’re no Jesus, Wintery.
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I’m a big meany! :-)
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I don’t think Jesus was thinking charitable giving when he told the rich man to rid himself of all he owns and follow Him. I believe He was making a point about being tied to one’s riches to the exclusion of God. How deep was the young man’s desire to please God? Would he give away all he owns, or is he so tied to his material wealth that it takes precedence over God? Sure, He told the kid to give it away to the poor, but again, I don’t think that was the point of telling him to do that. Think of it. If the rich kid gives away all he has to the poor, what does that make him? An impoverished follower. Imagine if everyone who had wealth gave it all away to the poor. All that happens then is that the formerly rich are now the presently poor, and they will soon receive from the formerly poor who now have their money. Imagine if everyone distributed their wealth evenly amongst everyone. To whom do we then give away our wealth after we sell it all to follow Christ? If a rich dude gives away all his wealth to the poor in order to follow Christ, does he not then purposely make of himself a burden on society by becoming a bum requiring financial assistance?
God does not want us to be poor. He frankly isn’t concerned with our financial state, though I believe He delights in the success of His children. I believe, however, that He is more concerned that we do not put our wealth up as a god over Him. Christ’s problem with the wealthy of His day was that they were not really very charitable, not that they were wealthy. They loved their money way too much to be true children of God.
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I agree with everything you’ve said, and thank you for your comment.
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