Deadly Decline (editorial from Investors Daily)
Posted 11/30/2009 07:05 PM ET
Health Care: As the Senate begins to debate reform legislation, the deadly disasters inherent in socialized medicine in the model nation of Britain should make the discussion a sober one.
While Washington lawmakers, accustomed to the comfort of top-notch medical treatment, consider a federal takeover of the health care sector, patients in Great Britain are dying because that government's system is a mess.
"Up to 10,000 people," the British Guardian reported Sunday, are dying needlessly of cancer each year "because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government's director of cancer services."
Britain is home to the sort of government-run health care that the political left has tried to push on this country for decades. It is also the home of government-rationed medical treatment. So the sad story of 10,000 needless cancer deaths a year doesn't surprise.
Not every needless cancer death can be blamed, of course, on Britain's National Health Service. In some cases, patients themselves are responsible for the late diagnoses of their diseases.
But the rest can be blamed on the system. Researchers at Durham University have identified four other types of delays patients encounter in receiving cancer care: doctor delay, delay in primary care, system delay and delay in secondary care. All are part of a state-operated system that has a poor record of keeping its trapped patients alive and healthy.
The unnecessary cancer deaths are not the only recent example of the rot in Britain's system.
The Times of London reported Saturday that the health secretary has ordered an immediate probe into "claims that patients are dying due to poor care in at least 27 hospitals around the country."
These are just the latest stories. The poor care that has become the hallmark of Britain's public medicine goes back many years. The long waiting times to see a doctor in the British, Canadian and Swedish government-run systems, as well as the denial of some drugs and what seems to be an institutional neglect of patients, are not new problems.
More government involvement won't correct the ills government has already created. Yet the Democratic leadership in Washington is determined to force more federal control over health care on a public that doesn't want it.
The left wants to be responsible for providing care for all. But what it will be responsible for, if it gets its way, is a deadly decline in the quality of American health care.
SOURCE: UNITED NATIONS’ INTERNATIONAL HEALTH ORGANIZATION as reprinted in Investors Daily
Percentage of men and women who survived a cancer five years after diagnosis:
U.S. 65%
England 46%
Canada 42%
Percentage of patients diagnosed with diabetes who received treatment within six months:
U.S. 93%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage of seniors needing hip replacement who received it within six months:
U.S. 90%
England 15%
Canada 43%
Percentage referred to a medical specialist who see one within one month:
U.S. 77%
England 40%
Canada 43%
Number of MRI scanners (a prime diagnostic tool) per million people:
U.S. 71
England 14
Canada 18
Percentage of seniors (65+), with low income, who say they are in "excellent health":
U.S. 12%
England 2%
Canada 6%
Sen. Harry Reid recently said, "Elderly Americans must learn to accept the inconveniences of old age."
I SAY, SHIP HARRY REID’S ASS TO CANADA OR ENGLAND !
And oh Yeah, don't forget who is doing this too us and VOTE FOR NO INCUMBENT in the coming election cycle! Reed, Whitehouse, Langevin, and Kennedy have been doing we TAXPAYING folks no favors!!
Teachers should be paid babysitter wages.
13 hours ago
6 comments:
Good post and good points Ev!
What I fear is for my kids, Ev. To heck with us old farts in our later years, you know, people 45 to 65 and still trying to work. Look at the kids graduating high school, college, and master degrees now - they're basically hosed. I'm younger than you but I have no idea how these kids can make it.
Things have been getting worse and worse on the health plan front for the last dozen years, now I think about it. We can barely manage and we make good money.
All I can do is hope and pray that somehow these kids turn out all right, and they don't mess up like us when considering how to care for their children. Goodness knows, we pretty much ruined it for them.
What would Sam Mott say?
There is no such thing as the United Nation's 'International' Health Organization.
The Investors Business Daily did not write any article with those statistics.
Maybe the writer "meant" to say United Nations World Health Organization? which ever it was/is, the numbers still match very closely, a few other sites.
The writer also "did not" say Investors Business daily. No matter how many times I look at it, it still says, "Investors Daily" and the only place I could find a link with that name was to the WSJ.
Don't listen to cranky old Anonymous. In these parts, the UN International Health Organization is commonly known as the WHO, and since you sourced a non-US publication (Investors Daily), it's fairly common that they would reference sources that the ordinary bored American can't just Google & be done with it.
I'm surprised you don't have more to say on the subject. I love the kinder/ gentler Glen Beck that comes out on these blogs-
as a single mom who pays (and pays and pays) for my own healthcare, I feel OK for myself- although I have to say if this thing passes, I'll be eating my daily apple since I won't be seein' no doctor- and I wouldn't mind seeing my daughter's generation not have to struggle with healthcare and rely on charity in the event of catastrophic illness when they go through the "non-covered" years, i.e., 22-28 (or when they get their first real job, whichever comes first).
If this thing was done the way it should have been done, it would have brought the cost down through regulating agains price collusion.
But that ain't happening, so I'm going to invest in Apple futures (ha).
Love these posts. Keep 'em coming. Hope you're feeling better.
I am just so stressed by the way Reid and Pelosi have gone about getting this farce pushed on the people of this country, (in the middle of the night) when they have been told a thousand, no make that millions of times by their constituents that they don't want it!!!
What the hell makes these ego ridden, elitist, bastards,( and not to appear sexist) bitches think that we need their hands on the tiller of our lives right down to when we may pass gas or go use the "facilities"?
I can't believe that someone has not taken a shot at any of the ringleaders yet. It will come though, when people start to die that shouldn't have. It is a good thing I don't live down amongst those idiots or they may have already been culled a might
Now THAT ought to elicit some sort of response from the useless bastards at Homeland Security!
But no they are still to damned busy confiscating tubes of toothpaste and suntan oil from Yankee tourists heading south to get out of the snow!
I really do love this country, but the one I grew up knowing and which I had hoped would be passed on, intact, to my kids and grand-chldren is fast fading away as all these liberal giveaway programs are burying us under a mountain of debt that we will not recover from for years if not decades.
The thing that really frosts my ass is that these so called "leaders" are so GD dumb or nearsighted that they can't see the looming disaster(forest) for the trees!
Oh well, Again I say to all to have a very Merry Christmas and a great New year! Sans barry hopefully!! TIFN
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