Posted on 08/14/2009 6:59:25 AM PDT by WOBBLY BOB
"...The findings of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as "outrageous" and "disgraceful".
About one in 10 hospitals already deny some surgery to obese patients and smokers, with restrictions most common in hospitals battling debt.
Managers defend the policies because of the higher risk of complications on the operating table for unfit patients. But critics believe that patients are being denied care simply to save money."
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I’m just glad I live in a country where no one is denied medical services just to save money.
Give Obama time. You will if he has anything to say about it.
Coming to a hospital near you........
> Don’t treat the old and unhealthy, say doctors
Triage, defined in a nutshell.
I wonder how many unfit non-resident paying customers from other countries were denied operations in the UK? NONE I would bet.
save
No one is denied medical care to save money. However, some people are denied medical insurance coverage. There is a difference. Only if you believe other people should have to pay for your medical care do you believe the two are equivalent...
kill the unborn, and old folks....The Brave New World...murder the defenseless...
The comments are hilarious!
“I think there are many instances that doctors treat patients purely for the doctor’s own benefit. They know they can’t help this person and yet try to keep him/her alive for more money in their pockets. Very cynical, I know. It happens though. And there are too many people on this earth anyway; some being keep alive “artificially” to help the doctors.”
Obama must have written this one...
Doctors and bean counters PUSH HARD to have people ASSUME a living will is “JUST KILL ME” orders.
Living will is misleading.
Advanced Directive is better.
EVEN BETTER is to IN WRITING designate a health care surrogate who makes decisions WHO YOU TRUST.
This Obama Deathcare bill has medical “staffers” (what the ^@%#!! is a medical staffer?) OVERRIDE your wishes.
Again, the people who take your DMV picture will be deciding if you get to live a little longer or die now.
(how about: The patient is suffering from terminal individualism and republicanism, kill them before it becomes contagious)
artificially? You mean with bypass, joint replacement, tumor debulking, valve replacements?
Spend 40-50 years paying into health taxes, and then when you finally need care, have it denied to you.
The healthcare debate is 100% about getting person A to pay for person B. Well, getting A to pay for B, C, D, and E - that way, though you lose the vote of A, you get four votes in return. Democracy lurches towards its ground-state.
No thanks. I don’t even like traditional insurance (unless I can leverage information arbitrage to my advantage somehow). For the sake of the corporate colluders especially, I sincerely hope health care provision continues to be outsourced to developing countries to meet the demand of a blossoming “health tourism” market.
Think this poster would like to put his/her money where their mouth is?
Nah...neither do I.
CNBC said Obama has mobilized the unions (SEIU and more) in order to have better images at the upcomming townhalls.
Get set, union thugs are on the loose. (paid volunteers?)
The debate in America may be opening some eyes in England.
But Stephen Hawkings is treated so all is right with the medical world in the UK.
I was told this by my attorney. Words, phrases, exceptions, medical terms used in Advanced Directives must be very specifically crafted to avoid "mis-interpretation". It's not a Do-It-Yourself" week end project.
That example really irritates me. The most famous physicist in the world gets really good treatment. What a shock! Does anyone really think every Brit with the same disease receives equivalent care?
Exceptional care has been and always will be provided for the rich, famous or powerful, in every country on earth.
The difference is that in the US most people, those with insurance, have received medical care almost but not quite equal to that provided the elite.
In most other countries all receive medical care much better than those without insurance here, but somewhat less than insured people here. Always less than the rich, famous or powerful elite.
More than anything else, this survey seems to reflect that doctors want less work. However, there is a grain of truth in there, somewhere.
That is, doctors, like anybody else, resent it when “extremist” people do horribly self-destructive things over an extended period of time, and then expect the doctor to just “patch them up”, so they can go *back* to trying to destroy themselves. This gives doctors, as it would give most people, great aggravation and frustration.
But that being said, there is all the difference in the world between one of these “extremist” people, like Manuel Uribe, who weighs 1,300 pounds; and someone who is just 50 pounds overweight.
If a doctor needs to tend to Mr. Uribe, he should rightfully note that unless his problem is “emergent”, like his heart is about to give out, that Uribe’s *real* problem is his extreme obesity. If there is even a month or two, it is not unreasonable that the doctor insist both that Mr. Uribe undergo *extensive* liposuction, and also be placed on a restrictive diet, while in hospital.
And if he refuses that treatment, then the doctor is in the right in refusing other treatment that he demands. That is, to just treat a symptom, and not the cause of his problem, is not what doctors are supposed to do.
However, compare this with someone who is 50 pounds overweight.
While their being overweight *may* lead to problems down the road, and the doctor is right to chastise them to lose some weight, and if they are showing some signs of ill health directly related to that weight, the doctor still has many alternatives to denial of service.
For example, if they need a hip replacement, why not make it contingent on their being below a certain weight—and how they get there is part of the deal. That is, liposuction again. And put to the patient that their excess weight will essentially destroy a new hip transplant, so it is truthfully a combined surgery. After that is done, they need at least to be given detailed diet instruction, so they don’t gain the weight back. All part of the same problem.
This puts the onus back on to the patient. That is, if they *want* an obese body image, and strangely enough, some people do; or if they are a neurotic eater, which is likewise common, there are still ways around the problem.
But the doctor must recognize that there is more to the patient than just the one problem.
Add to this that there are people who are naturally self-destructive. Think of them as “slow suicides”. They try to kill themselves with things that they know are bad for them, or by exercising terrible judgment that puts them in harm’s way. Instead of being just frustrated with them, doctors need to recognize that they have a psychiatric problem that is driving their physical problem.
This is not a reason to deny service, but to extend service.
However, this is the NHS we are talking about. So it sounds like the doctors have been caught up in the socialized medicine paradigm. Patients are just single problems, sent to them as quotas, and once patched, “Next!” Depersonalized. Dehumanized.
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