Tag Archives: Government-Run Health Care

News

NHS kills a man’s wife by delaying cancer treatment for 7 months

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Story here in the UK Daily Mail. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

As an experienced GP, Uday Pathak had good reason to trust his instincts and knowledge when his wife became ill.

The 62-year-old suspected she had cancer and urged medics to carry out an immediate full body scan. Tragically, they delayed for seven months and 54-year-old Pradnya later died of the disease.

[…]When the scan was finally carried out at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire, Stoke-on-Trent, it showed Dr Pathak was correct all along.

Despite six months of chemotherapy, Mrs Pathak, a mother-of-two from Seabridge, Staffordshire, died in December 2008. She had been referred to the respiratory unit in May 2007 with a persistent dry cough.

Four months later, Dr Pathak said he raised the possibility his wife had cancer of the lymphatic system. But it was only in April 2008 that a body scan was carried out by the hospital’s haematology team.

Consultant haematologist Richard Chasty, who saw Mrs Pathak three days before her death, said she may have survived if diagnosed sooner.

The horror is that a man works hard as a doctor in a socialist country for his entire life, slavishly paying half his earnings to the government under the constant threat of imprisonment. They take his money and they spend it on other people who may not even be paying anything. And then finally he has need of care. His own wife, who he has sworn an oath to protect, is taken ill.

He turns to the people who have taken hundreds of thousands of dollars of his money and he asks them for help. And they deny him that help, because they have spent his money on sex change operations to change a prison inmate from a man to a woman, and then back to a man, in order to buy votes from coveted special interest groups who demand “equality” with those who are happy with their biological sex.

He is powerless to intervene to save his wife and must watch as his lifelong partner dies right before his eyes. He has no money to afford private care – it was all paid in taxes. He no longer has money to go abroad to the United States to get treatment, and it is in any case too late to try, anyway.

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News

Police probe death of NHS hospital patient who begged for water

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Story here from the UK Telegraph. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

A hospital patient, Kane Gorny, died of dehydration after becoming so desperate for a drink of water that he called police for help.

The 22-year-old was not given vital medication after an operation at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, according to his mother.

A coroner has such grave concerns about the case that it has been referred to police who are investigating Mr Gorny’s care.

[…]His mother, Rita Cronin, says he needed drugs three times a day to regulate his hormones, but he was not given them by hospital staff.

She said he became very dehydrated but his requests for water were refused and nurses called in security guards to restrain him when he became angry.

He became so frustrated that he rang the police from his bed to demand their help but officers were assured Mr Gorny was fine.

She said nurses assumed he was just badly behaved.

Mr Gorny’s cause of death was determined to be dehydration.

The UK Daily Mail adds:

Miss Cronin… said: ‘The police told me he’d said, “Please help me. All I want is a drink and no one is helping me”.

[…]’I told three nurses there was something wrong with my son and they said, “He’s fine” and walked off. I started to cry and a locum doctor who was there told me not to worry.

[…]His mother added: ‘When I went back to the hospital I was told that all the nurses had been offered counselling as they were so traumatised, but nothing was offered to me.

‘The whole thing is a disgrace. This hospital has a brilliant reputation and boasts of its excellent standards and safety record.

‘But as soon as my son walked into that ward, his death warrant was signed. Of the 32 people who were involved in my son’s care, every one made a mistake that ultimately led to his death, from the consultant to the care assistant.

‘There has been an internal investigation but St George’s never made it public and it was a whitewash-After his death the hospital never phoned me or wrote to me to apologise. How could this happen in the 21st century?’

When you buy something from someone, you stand a much better chance of getting quality service from them if you have the money in your hand and you can take that money somewhere else if you are not satisfied with the offer in front of you. That’s why free market capitalism is great for the consumer, but it sucks for the corporations. The corporations have to compete to give you what you want at the lowest price. But when government takes over a service, you have no choice. It’s a monopoly, and you dance to their tune. They get paid through tax money whether they give you what you want or not!

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News

UK report finds “unimaginable” suffering in government-run hospital

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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.

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