British Social Medicine - Disaster

[The Choker]

Straight from Great Britain’s National Health Service Audit Division:

One in four new mothers were left alone by midwives when they were in labour, the NHS watchdog has revealed.

Some were forced to give birth on the floor in waiting rooms, having earlier been told not to come in as they were ‘not in enough pain’.

Other women said they felt ‘lonely, helpless and uncared for’ after being made to wait two hours for morphine following a caesarean.

The NHS’s chief inspector of hospitals Professor Sir Mike Richards, who oversaw a survey of 23,000 women, said some cases were ‘shocking’.

He added that failings in maternity wards were turning what should be the ‘most joyous’ experience of a woman’s life into one of the ‘most frightening’.



Thousands of cancer patients are being denied urgent tests by their [General Practitioners], figures show.

Family doctors are typically referring fewer than half of all victims for fast-track appointments that are meant to ensure they have the best chance of survival.

-A “survey said thousands of patients have all but given up trying to secure appointments with their family doctor.”

-A report released in early 2013 was the fourth investigation of its kind into the terrible neglect at Mid Stafford Hospital. A previous report found that conditions at Stafford may have led to 1,200 needless deaths between 2005 and 2009.

-Between September 2012 and September 2013, “255,640 patients were kept waiting outside English hospitals [in ambulances] for at least double the 15 minutes recommended by NHS guidance.” A patient in “Wales was made to wait six hours and 22 minutes before being admitted, while another in the East of England was delayed for five hours and 51 minutes

[Julie]

Can you please post your link to that story? I'd like to know when it was written, in what publication, by whom and ?? sponsored by who? Thanks.

[Wulfman...]

Can you please post your link to that story? I'd like to know when it was written, in what publication, by whom and ?? sponsored by who? Thanks.

If you copy and past the first sentence into a Google search box, you'll see MANY links displayed.


Den

.

[Cereal Killer]

Can you please post your link to that story? I'd like to know when it was written, in what publication, by whom and ?? sponsored by who? Thanks.

It was sponsored by the British government.

Read the entire study Julie - http://www.midstaffspublicinquiry.com/

It's worse that what Choker posted above.

Reading through the government healthcare mess they have in Britain is depressing.

[Goofproof]

It's what you are asking for, but the U.S. Government is6 much more capable of mucking it up. Greed of big bussiness is alive and well here, and they own the government. Jim

Socialism works until you run out of other people's money.

[msla]

I read similar news from Norway about issues in the health care system. My personal opinion is that if the system was broken in the past, we will find that the system is still broken, only in a myriad of new ways that we are just now beginning to understand.

[Jaywolf]

I am betting that the quote is a part of the report that although I don't have time to read it now contains positive as well as negative. The National Health Service.. please drop the Socialism crap.. let me repeat NATIONAL Health Service that exists as a right to serve ALL of the nation regardless of social status or financial means may have it's issues, but it has nothing on America.

I would never have said this stuff here because to my mind it is not relevant to this Forum, it is not relevant to CPAP specifically. However...

I am British, I have lived in America for almost 11 years now and right from the beginning I saw the American health system as a horror story. The very first thing I remember was seeing a notice for a spaghetti dinner benefit to help a family pay medical bills for their child suffering from cancer.. WHAT??? I was absolutely horrified. That a family should be under pressure to worry about how they were going to pay for treatment while their child was suffering with cancer in a so called civilized country was crazy to me.

The commercials for drugs in magazines and on TV. In England the Doctor prescribes you the best medicine for your condition.. in America the drug companies push their drugs through advertising so that the patient will go to the Doctor and demand to try the medication. The drug companies therefore have a stranglehold.. it's big business.

One sector of the population in America actually believes that the other sector does not deserve medical treatment because they are unfortunate enough not to have a job or to have fallen on bad times. Those who do not want to work or are in their situation of their own choosing are in the minority in my opinion, but it makes those well off feel good to blame everything on them.

My children and all my grandchildren were born in English hospitals.. all with excellent attention.

My Mother in law here in America had lung cancer. She was in the hospital and they sent her to a horrible nursing home because there was no one at home to care for her.. everyone had to work. When she was told she had 2 weeks left she insisted on going home.. and my sister in law had to hire a friend to care for her because the Visiting Nurses didn't go to that area.

My brother had lung cancer in Stafford, Staffordshire in 2011. He had an entire team dedicated to his care, Oncologists, Doctor, Nurses, a nurse visited him at home every single week and he had people just a phone call away if he or his wife needed help. He also had the dedicated Hospice hospital, where he died, to help with his medication and then his final journey.

My American husband had a diabetic complication while he lived in England with me, an abcess in his tummy, they had to operate and drain it. For three weeks after the surgery a nurse came to our home to dress his wound every single day.. what did this cost? Nothing! Nor did any of his Doctor visits or his medication seen as he has an illness that makes him exempt from ALL prescription costs.

Trust me there are plenty of horror stories in the American health system and from personal experience.. I know which I would rather have.

[CowFish]

the report that although I don't have time to read it now

May I suggest you go read the report and be thoroughly horrified about what is going on in your motherland?

The very first thing I remember was seeing a notice for a spaghetti dinner benefit to help a family pay medical bills for their child suffering from cancer.. WHAT??? I was absolutely horrified.

That is one of the great things about America - people helping people without becoming dependent on a heartless government.

[SleepyBobR]

Jaywolf, the situation in the UK has likely deteriorated since you lived there, the eventual fate of all such universal programs. Canada has the same problem but is not as bad. Yet. As for the US system, the main problem is with the size of the healthcare bill, not with who pays it. If the care is un-affordable, so will be the insurance whether it be private or socialized. Obamacare seeks to spread the costs around in a very complicated way that requires people who don't want insurance to buy it, so those who need it can afford it, all while doing little or nothing to address the underlying high cost problem. I can't see how this is going to work and it is arguably even worse than the single payer alternative. For the time being, at least, there are now more people in the US without coverage than before the ACA and more on Medicaid.

[Jaywolf]

It's okay. I understand. I am well versed with all of the opinions out there.. which to my mind is why the American people will never get a better deal. Please don't think I don't love America and Americans, I do. It actually is the reason that I get so upset about this issue, because I care about Americans.

I am not horrified about what is going on in my Motherland and no report will change that. I saw my brothers care first hand. I have a son with a blood disease, a grandaughter with coeliac disease and gluten intolerance causing other health issues, my son was electrocuted and almost died but for the NHS care he received. My Father had disc problems, a brain tumor, a red blood cell disease, multiple strokes, duplex kidneys and he died at age 80 with care I cannot fault. My Aunt had colon cancer and was cured, dying of natural causes at the age of 91. True the NHS didn't spot my Father's sleep apnea, but the American system misdiagnosed mine and didn't see it either. My American husband said he thinks it was because they could make more money testing me and diagnosing me with everything else under the sun.

I did say that both systems have their issues.. but I stand by my personal experience of both.. continuing personal experience of both as my entire family are all in England. And I live here in the USA. American is supposed to be the greatest country in the world, if that is so, Americans deserve a better deal than they are getting.. period.

[lastlib]

In Ohio a huge percentage of children do not have health insurance and rely on emergency rooms. The problem is that emergency rooms only stabilize the patients and then refer to the regular physician. These children do not have a regular physician. Since I work in the juvenile justice system I see children who have never had a checkup. I admit that government supplied health care is inefficient but there is no alternative that I know of. The current system is irretrievably broken. Obama care is too little too late. Eventually people will have to choose between an inefficient goverrnment supplied care and expensive self insurance with expensive efficient care for the wealthy. Then everyone will have a choice.

[Jaywolf]

And just to clarify I don't mean the Affordable Healthcare Act. Sadly, that is a disaster. At first I supported it wholeheartedly thinking it was like the English system, as my husband and many of his workmates also did. But it goes nowhere near far enough and the drug and insurance companies still dictate who gets what.

British National Health Service.. I am very proud of it. With it's issues. I told my kids, very seriously, if they ever try to get rid of it I expect them to take to the streets with banners and march.

[Lambeau]

Socialism works until you run out of other people's money.

Actually, that often made quotation is factually wrong.

First, we will never "run out" of other peoples money. And secondly, the government can continue to print money until the sun explodes. While that causes inflation with the debt paid off with devalued currency, those printing presses run by the fed will never run out of ink.

[SleepyBobR]

My point was that the care itself is just too expensive in the US. It isn't an insurance issue so much as a cost issue. Tort reform and more competition across the board would bring costs down but there's so much vested interest in the status quo that real change is elusive. The ACA isn't the answer and may be making things worse.

[BlackSpinner]

Regardless of the article the system is still vastly superior, cheaper and more effective and treats many more people - in fact all the people, not just the privileged few, then the American system. In fact just about every country in the developed world has a better functioning system that doesn't leave people dying alone at home without treatment.
The incidences quoted above are statistically rarer then the number of people dying from lack of any care in the USA and are no justification for promoting the American system.