Is this the 'healthcare' Obama wants for America?

As a UK citizen, I feel it my duty to show people the dark side of free healthcare. I'm fully aware human error exists in any healthcare system, but some of whats happening in the UK really takes the biscuit.

Man collapses with ruptured appendix, three weeks after NHS doctors 'took it out'

Paul Steane went into hospital to be cared for, but after a catalogue of medical blunders, took his own life.
(all this happened because the hospital staff failed to make sure he was drinking water!!)

Hospital blunders meant baby bled to death.

This is few recent media articles reffering to the most preventable and neglegent mistakes made by NHS staff.

Thats not the mention the string of NHS failings that aided the abuse & eventual murder of Baby Peter (Baby P). He was seen by multiple hospital staff & doctors, one of whom has since been sacked for failing to spot the obvious distress the poor child was in.

The man with the burst appendix lost his job because his bosses didn't beleive what had happened (although what he probably expects to get in compensation will probably keep him for a good part of his life, I hope), etc etc. When a mistake is made by the NHS, the frequent result is ruined lives. We have no choice over who provides our treatment, unless we have thousands of pounds for private healthcare.

Even in my small town there were reports that the local NHS hospital had been throwing dead babies in the dumpster. Then there's the postcode lottery, depending on what postcode area you live in, you might have to wait months or even years for lifesaving treatment, psychological therapies, operations etc. If the specialist you need to see or the care you need is not available under your postcode, they won't send you out of your county, thats too much money, you go without.

I should know, I've been years seeking help with Asperger Syndrome ( VERY poorly recognised on the NHS) OCD and an addiction. Nobody's bothered, this sort of thing is seen as 'alternative therapy' on the NHS, and you'll lucky if you get anything close to decent treatment.

On the other side of the coin there are managers & bosses (far too many of them) sitting in offices, enjoying 100k a year for sitting at a desk all day. There are more of these overpaid spare ribs than there are doctors, nurses & acute care staff on the NHS.

When something does go wrong, can you expect an appology from your local 100k a year hospital 'manager', no, they deny responsability of course.

You might be thinking that all our healthcare services under the NHS are free, WRONG. If your ill & need to see a doctor, you don't have to pay for that, but if that doctor gives you a prescription, your faced with £7.10 PER ITEM on that prescription. If your unable to pay this, which can hit costs of £50 & more, then you go without your medicine. I know this because my sister had a nasty bout of tonsilitis, which resulted in her needing multiple medications. Her script came to over £50!! Lucky for her my family is not exactly poor. What happens though in the case of someone who's income is about 5p over the criteria for free prescriptions?
(continued below)








[edit on 26-8-2009 by The Chez]

Free prescriptions are reserved for a very small number with certain medical conditions and very low incomes, and people who are on income related state benefits.

Dental care on the NHS is also NOT FREE. If your lucky enough to find an NHS dentist, you'll be faced with charges of over £160 per course of treatment needed. Disgusting, I cannot afford dental care, on what is thought to be, world over, a free healthcare system.

Optical care on the NHS is NOT FREE. Charges for this can be anything well over £100, depending if you need glasses or contact lenses, glasses prices can reach over £200.

Some of the blunders made by the NHS, such as the guy with the appendix, are very hard to beleive. It's hard to grasp that a sposedly caring organisation & trained doctors & surgeons could allow such staringly obvious blunders to happen. The care part of the NHS is all but gone now, it's given way to targets, profits, & egos.

Americans, is this REALLY what you want for your families??

Lets discuss.

[edit on 26-8-2009 by The Chez]

Show me one country where mistakes are not made in health care.

If I Google i.e., USA Canadian or French medical blunders will there be a blank page I doubt it very much.

Will a child with lukemia whose parents have no insurance have the best treatment on offer? according to my American friends the answer is no, yet with the NHS this child would have the best there is.

Things like this happen when business hires idiots instead of hiring the most qualified. Quotas and Affirmative Action have placed many fools into key positions.

The thing is through my own experience and the experience of those I know, I could post a thread on here detailing the amazing life saving, emotional support and family services provided free by the NHS, that will out weigh any negative claims IMO. Sure there are problems with the NHS, but thats down to underfunding and mismanagement.

Remember the NHS is the largest employer in the country and mistakes are just a part of life IM afraid.

reply to post by The Chez


Every single day in hospitals all over the world, mistakes like this are made by doctors, nurses and surgeons.

WHATS YOUR POINT???

Trying to say that a half dozen incompetence issues that arose in a country of 60 odd million people is the fault of the health service is absolutely ridiculous. Also trying to say that these are issues that only occur in a nationalized healthcare system is even worse.

Also, its a free healthcare service.. if you want premium healthcare, GET HEALTH INSURANCE AND GO TO PRIVATE CLINICS.

Or would you prefer to see all the people who can't afford health insurance suffer from physical illness because they cant afford a doctor.. or mental illness because they are under so much pressure to pay their bill.

The lack of scope amongst some people completely amazes me.

But thats probably because Im a "Socialist"

I do agree the NHS is probably one of the best healthcare systems in the world, people enter Britain illegaly every day just to try & access it. My point wasn't defaming it, my point was just trying to get people to see that just because something's free, it's not always the fantastic thing people see it as.

How many stories come out in the US, just out of interest, about hospitals crawling with mice, maggots & flies, & people going in for a simple operation & losing limbs or dying because of a hospital infection.

British hospitals are filthy for 50% of the time, thanks to contract cleaners being brought in to cut costs. These guys are more at home cleaning a bar than a hospital, they have no idea how to prevent the spread of infection like the old style matrons did.

Originally posted by dizzylizzy
Show me one country where mistakes are not made in health care.

If I Google i.e., USA Canadian or French medical blunders will there be a blank page I doubt it very much.

Will a child with lukemia whose parents have no insurance have the best treatment on offer? according to my American friends the answer is no, yet with the NHS this child would have the best there is.

A child with lukemia is just as likely to die on the NHS either waiting for treatment, or from an infection caught in a filthy hospital, or simply because their postcode cuts them out of specialist care. Or they'll die because their parents are unable to pay prescription charges for the drugs they need, no cancer patients are not exempt from the cost of prescriptions!! However someone with a thyroid problem is. Work that out.

[edit on 26-8-2009 by The Chez]

No healthcare system in the world is perfect and never will be. Every system will have its ''horror'' stories. The media only picks up on these, never the other side of the coin with the thousands of good 'end results' of care. For every horror story you provide, I bet I could find hundreds if not thousands of episodes of good care.

Most Brits would agree that the NHS is far from perfect, but then it was never designed/envisaged to be the way it is now.

I am an NHS Nurse and I get very angry when I see people slating it. Sure, some mistakes are made, we are only human after all. But you do not see or hear of the countless numbers of people that owe their lives and quality of life to the NHS and its staff.

Mistakes are ok when your talking about products, like TVs & ipods, but when they happen in healthcare, people's lives are ruined or lost. Nothing can ever be perfect, but one death due to medical neglegence is too many in my eyes.

Originally posted by The Chez
Mistakes are ok when your talking about products, like TVs & ipods, but when they happen in healthcare, people's lives are ruined or lost. Nothing can ever be perfect, but one death due to medical neglegence is too many in my eyes.

....... and these things dont happen in other countries healthcare systems?

Yes, any mistake that results in a patient's death is sad and regretable, but unfortunately it also a fact of life, these things do and will happen from time to time. We can only minimalise the incidents from happening by learning from these mistakes.

Please do not tarnish the NHS because of a few unfortunate incidents. In the whole the NHS does a wonderful job with a lot of restraints and with limited resources.

reply to post by The Chez


Ah yes. Of course, because the UK system is free, then mistakes are bound to happen. I notice you haven't found anything from France or Germany, or Sweden, which all have social Healthcare? You just wanted to pick on the NHS.

Obviously, because you pay for your healthcare in the US, mistakes don't happen. How silly of me to think otherwise. Now I've seen the light, I am willing to pay thousands of pounds to have my arm fixed after I broke it. Waiting for 30 mins in an NHS A&E and having it set for free just doesn't appeal to me anymore. (True story. Broke my arm in Feb, went to A&E in the morning and arrived at 0915. I was seen by a triage nurse straight away, saw by a doctor within 15 minutes, x-rayed and then sent striaght up to the plaster unit to have it set. I was home and drinking tea by 1100)

Anyway, sarcasm over, do you really want me to spend 5 minutes on Google and trawl up the litterally thousands of pages on US medical blunders?

Bottom line is, doctors are human and humans make mistakes. It has naff all to do with whose paying for it. The NHS doctors here are paid as much, if not more, than doctors almost anywhere on the planet. Hence why they all come here. We have world leading centres in fields such as Kidney disease (Guy's and St Thomas) or paediatrics (Gt Ormand Street).

And you honestly expect everyone to believe that ebcause you post a few stories about some mistakes that it somehow vindicates your position that paying thoussands and thousands, causing hardship for many, for medication and healthcare is better?

Ok, whatever floats your boat chap.



[edit on 26/8/09 by stumason]

Originally posted by The Chez
How many stories come out in the US, just out of interest, about hospitals crawling with mice, maggots & flies, & people going in for a simple operation & losing limbs or dying because of a hospital infection.

British hospitals are filthy for 50% of the time, thanks to contract cleaners being brought in to cut costs. These guys are more at home cleaning a bar than a hospital, they have no idea how to prevent the spread of infection like the old style matrons did.

Really? Show me the statistics that say British are hospitals are filthy 50% of the time, crawling with vermin?

The problem we have here(as it is across all of western medicine) is in fact due to being a little too clean, hence why the "superbugs", like MRSA, have developed. They are resitant to alot of the conventional cleaning techniques, hence why the hospitals all had a bloom of MRSA infection. I thik you will find that the statistics for the NHS tally quite well with MRSA and other "superbug" infection across alot of the developed world.

Hospitals making mistakes are one thing. A govt run system that causes "The babies born in hospital corridors: Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices and hospital toilets" is a whole nother issue!

www.dailymail.co.uk... -toilets.html

The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets - even a caravan - went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.

Additionally, overstretched maternity units shut their doors to any more women in labour on 553 occasions last year.

You seriously have to wonder what the agenda is for people who continue to praise NHS. And you also have to SERIOUSLY wonder where these reports come from that it's one of the top systems in the world. Facts and numbers indicate otherwise.


[edit on 26-8-2009 by jjkenobi]

reply to post by jjkenobi


You seriously have to wonder about the agenda of the Daily Mail (and anyone who uses them as a source). This rag is known for false reporting, blowing stuff out of proportion and generally being utter tripe.

actually if you would pay attention to the content of HR3200 it is not about your health care at all, it is about you INSURANCE.

I know it is hard for many to separate the two but they are DIFFERENT.

You see HEALTH CARE is what a doctor gives you. It is everything that happens to you INSIDE the hospital.

On the other hand you have INSURANCE. This is the institution that is tasked with helping you PAY for what happens to you in the hospital.

If you want to critique HR3200 you should approach it from the INSURANCE perspective because that is all it is.

Once the government starts making legislation concerning the nationalization of the health care system then maybe bring out this information, but as it stands today you simply look like one of the many who has been grossly misinformed by the CORPORATE MEDIA who wants to protect its other CORPORATE friends in the insurance industry.

You know, 'birds of a feather' and all.

my suggestion is 'wake up'.

Given the massive number of medical errors in the US and elsewhere, I find the OP utterly preposterous.

There was a program on NPR recently on the subject of medical errors. The doctor on the discussion panel said that they were virtually unavoidable to to nature (and difficulty) of diagnosis.

And don't get me started when someone was having a surgery in the US and doctors left scissors in her abdominal cavity and had sewn her up... After some weeks of misery, they had to open her up and get the tool.

To blame nationalized nature of medicine in the UK on the occurrences is wrong.

Originally posted by buddhasystem

To blame nationalized nature of medicine in the UK on the occurrences is wrong.

Can we blame it for some girl being diagnosed with swine flu over the phone and prescribed Tamiflu over the phone and then dying of tonsillitis?

A girl died from complications arising from tonsillitis after being misdiagnosed with swine flu over the phone by a GP, her father has claimed.

Charlotte Hartey, 16, of Oswestry, Shropshire, died in Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on 31 July.

A post-mortem test found she died of natural causes though her father Karl said the coroner told the family she died from blood poisoning.

The NHS has said it is reviewing her case.

Charlotte's family said she was diagnosed over the phone by a local GP on 22 July and prescribed tamiflu. Source

I know they want to do what they can on the cheap and really quickly like a McDonalds but an "over the phone" diagnosis followed by a prescription seems a little reckless.

reply to post by Animal


Great post, a perspective that is all too often lost, unfortunately it's the truth, and it has gotten lost within all of the partisan and special interest diversions.

Thanks for reminding us all. Star for the animal


And if people really wish to compare health care successes, the UK still has a higher infant mortality and life expectancy rates than that of the US.

reply to post by thisguyrighthere


Nope, we can blame that on a Government who saw it fit to overide doctors and remove diagnosis from their hands, apparently to relieve pressure on them, even though the doctors themselves have called the move dangerous. It wasn't a medical decision, but a political one to "save money" as they've blown the nations cash on bailing out the banks.

But, look at it from the flip side, the UK is one of a handful of nations (which don't include the US) with a national strategy for swine flu and a stockpile of anti-virals enough for the entire population, which won't cost the patients any more than the £7 for a prescription. How much is Tamiflu in the US?

EDIT: I'll save you the effort, it is around $9 a Pill! When a full course is 10 pills, that's alot of money....

[edit on 28/8/09 by stumason]