Posted on 06/20/2012 8:24:14 AM PDT by AngelesCrestHighway
NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday. Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial death pathway into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly. He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country. It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent. It can include withdrawal of treatment including the provision of water and nourishment by tube and on average brings a patient to death in 33 hours.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
If I had a terminal and painful illness with no hope for a decent life I would welcome a quick death. I believe this story to be a bunch of hype. Now if they were killing viable and treatable patients strictly on the basis of age, then there would be legs to this story.
There should be a Dr. Kevorkian available when you need one.
If they are killing off seniors to free up beds...sounds a bit harsh to me.
For a “realist” you sure don’t live up to your name.
You really think these stories are overblown? Are you living under a rock?
Google “NHS horror stories” and behold your future. Educate yourself.
All need be aware of the Orwellian British agency...eerily foreshadowed in a novel, That Hideous Strength, written by CS Lewsi in 1944....N.I.C.E.
Set up by the Labour government in 1999, the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (N.I.C.E.) produces “guidance” for the NHS on what drugs and treatments should be provided by Britains government-funded health system. From the extraction of wisdom teeth, to the funding of Alzheimers drugs, to the provision or withdrawal of nutrition and hydration to disabled patients, N.I.C.E. lays down what will and will not be paid for by Britains National Health Service.
The N.I.C.E. describes its template of criteria as being based on “efficacy and cost effectiveness,” in which a key formula is the “quality adjusted life year” (QALY). The QALY “takes into consideration the quality of life of the patient during any additional time for which their life will be prolonged”. The clinical and cost effectiveness of the treatment is then used as the basis for a recommendation as to whether or not the treatment should be provided.
The case of Leslie Burke, a retired postman with a degenerative motor neurone disease, is illustrative. Burke sued the government for the right not to be denied nutrition and hydration when his illness rendered him unable to swallow or communicate. He won his first case in 2005 with a judge ruling that denying nutrition and hydration “would be a breach of claimants rights under . . . the European Convention on Human Rights.” But the General Medical Council and the Department of Health appealed and won.
The head of scientific development and bioethics at the Department of Health, Elizabeth Woodeson, argued in the case that the NHS, according to the guidelines laid down by the N.I.C.E., must retain the right to dehydrate such patients to death or “there would be considerable risk of inefficient use of NHS resources.”
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2008/feb/08020701
N.I.C.E runs what are effectively, the death panels, in Britain. Coming here iminently ...courtesy of the Democrat Party and Obama...
And that is YOUR CHOICE. If that is your choice that is your choice.
However, if someone wants to live until they draw their last breath that is THEIR CHOICE. I don’t care how aged someone is...they DESERVE the best healthcare they can get. They raised their families, worked their butts off over their lives, abided by the laws and whatever else... and they DESERVE to be treated with human dignity and respect and given meds to help them. If they make it fine...if they don’t that is God’s plan.
Nobody, no obama, no Dr., no nurse, no family member NOBODY has a right to deprive anyone from the health care they deserve. If THEY ask to be let go...once again...that is THEIR CHOICE but no one elses!!!!
We are NOT to be dictated to. We should always do everything we can to save lives. So. your choice to welcome a quick death as you said is your right. It is YOUR decision...not someone elses. THAT is the bottom line here.
***Now if they were killing viable and treatable patients strictly on the basis of age, then there would be legs to this story.***
Thirty years ago it broke in the news that elderly people were TERRIFIED to call on a doctor as it was found the doctors were killing the patients because THE DOCTOR decided the patient had no quality of life left. It did not matter how the patient felt about their quality of life.
A while ago, I began connecting the dots:
First, the stories about people being refused water while in hospital in Britain. A man who drank the water from a plant in his room because no one would give him water, then the patient who ended up calling the police because no one would give him water. The police show up, they do not give him any water, they leave, he dies soon after.
Second, the European Union section that deals with healthcare comes out with the ridiculous ruling that water is NOT a hydrating agent.
Third, a story I read that said that the hospitals used to tell patient’s families when the patient was put on this program that labeled them terminal. However, those pesky family members would intervene (I don’t know, maybe they gave them water) and would end up saving the life of the patient, which led to
Four, another article saying that they had decided that they would no longer tell family members when their loved one was labeled as “terminal”.
Five — this article, yeah we kill thousands every year. And, they seem proud of it.
As you say, coming to a hospital near us via Obamacare.
The difference seems to be that YOU want to decide, this article says that someone in the hospital decides whether you get any treatment. I think that is a big difference.
One of the things you seem to be missing is that the definition of “terminal” varies when one is subject to nationalized health care.
One example, atrial valve stenosis, was considered to have little in the way of treatment and to be terminal.
This is something that is not likely to effect a person until they are 75 or so.
There is no such thing as cheap heart surgery.
Here in the States we now have a procedure that can “cure” it.
Would a government actuary find heart surgery on a 75 year old to be efficient or cost effective?
I failed to mention this was in the Netherlands.
What don’t these doctors understand about the Commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”??
That includes choosing this method of death for oneself or for a loved one, doesn’t it?
Good grief, get them out of the hospitals and back into your home where you can treat them without the slow death of these doctor OR Hospice.
Yes, when my husband died, we had hospice for four months. I regret it now — for I see how they manipulated his death.
These people will ALL have too answer to God one day. And they are not going to like God’s answer -—
“sounds a bit harsh to me”
Sounds a bit “SOYLENT GREEN” to me.
The “Shipman Cult” lives!
Dr. Harold Shipman murdered over 200 of his patients, before being convicted, sentenced to prison, and hanging himself. Not out of feelings of guilt, but out of feelings of self pity, that it was not fair that he be imprisoned.
If each physician involved in these murders has been as prolific as Shipman, in a single year this would mean 650 of them had each killed 200 patients. Half as prolific, 1,300 doctors would have killed 100 patients each.
So either *some* doctors are killing almost a patient a day, *each*, or more, or doctors in Britain are almost all engaged in a more limited killing spree, killing more people than most serial killers.
That is, every British doctor could right now be killing more people *each year* than did the Green River Killer, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez,
The Boston Strangler, The Hillside Strangler, Ed Gein, etc.
The whack left hates America and this is their way of exterminating the elderly. Can you imagine living your whole life in relative happiness then having to face the horror of some government dictate taking your life because they determined your life is over?...To hell with Obama!
The reality is if I choose to die then no one should stop me. Of course if someone wants to live then no one should prevent it.
That is not YOUR reality?
This is how you pay for “free” healthcare.
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