Posted on 09/06/2014 10:43:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
It’s time to add to our collection of horror stories from the U.K.’s government-run healthcare system (previous examples can be found here,
here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here,here,and here).
What makes today’s story different, though, is that the bureaucracy not only is denying care to a small child, but also seeking to prevent the family from seeking treatment elsewhere.
Check out these excerpts from a blood-chilling story in USA Today.
The parents of a child suffering from a severe brain tumor signaled Monday they would defy efforts to force them to return to Britain, days after their family fled.
So why did they feel the need to escape a presumably civilized nation?
It seems government-run healthcare isn’t exactly on the cutting edge when it comes to life-saving treatments.
The family had fled to Spain in hopes of selling a property to obtain enough cash for a new treatment in the Czech Republic or the United States they hope will help their child. Police pursued them and issued an arrest warrant on suspicion of neglect after Southampton General Hospital realized their patient — Ashya King, 5 — was gone, without their consent. British authorities have made no apology for the warrant.
I can’t resist interrupting the main focus of the story at this point 
because the story then includes this line.
The case has riveted Britain, which is proud of a health service that offers universal care.
Maybe Brits are proud of their NHS, which would be a poor reflection on the collective IQ of the nation, but it certainly doesn’t offer universal care.
Unless, of course, you include neglect and torture in your definition of care.
Now back to our main story.
…the saga has…raised volatile questions of how much power authorities should have in interfering in some of the most sensitive of questions — and whether it has the right to insist that treatment dictates be followed. …Television images have shown the Kings being loaded into a Spanish squad car in handcuffs. When asked by the BBC on their views, the couple told the reporter they are just trying to help their child. …The family has criticized Britain’s health care system, saying he has a serious tumor that needs an advanced treatment option called proton beam therapy and that it wasn’t being made available to him. …Unlike other types of cancer treatment, it doesn’t indiscriminately kill surrounding healthy tissue, so there could be fewer long term effects.
But fear not. If little Ashya can somehow hold on until 2018, maybe the bureaucrats will be able to help.
Britain’s health department announced in 2011 it will build two treatment centers to make proton beam therapy available in London and Manchester from 2018. Until those facilities open, Britain will pay for patients eligible for the therapy to go to the USA and Switzerland for treatment. It wasn’t immediately clear why health care officials didn’t make this option available to Aysha.
As a parent, I know I would break the law if faced with the same situation.
It’s outrageous and disgusting, though, that such laws even exist.
P.S. I don’t mean to pick on the United Kingdom. We also have horror storiesabout government-run healthcare in the United States.
2 patients limp into two different doctors’ offices with the same complaint: Both have trouble walking and may require hip surgery.
Patient 1. is examined within the hour, is x-rayed the same day and has a time booked for surgery the following week.
Patient 2. sees his family doctor after waiting 3 weeks for an appointment, then waits 8 weeks to see a specialist, then gets an x-ray, which isn’t reviewed for another week and finally has his surgery scheduled for 6 months from then, pending the review boards decision on
his age and remaining value to society.
Why the different treatment for the 2 patients?
The FIRST is a Golden Retriever taken to a vet.
The SECOND is a Senior Citizen on Obama care.
In November, if there is no change in government, we’ll all have to find a good vet.
Danny been asleep lately?.
A few years ago here was a story from Canada where a hospital was renting out its MRI equipment to veterinarians during nights and weekends when it wasn't being used for human patients. When it became generally known, it would be reasonable to expect the Canadian health officials to start running multiple shifts on the equipment to allow more people to be scanned. Instead they just prohibited vets from using it.
The BIG PROBLEM with permitting outside care (or even second opinions) in a socialized system is that the outside help gives people LEVERAGE in dealing with the government-run system.
In the UK, it now COMMON for pensioners (i.e., old people) with terminal cancer to be told that “there is nothing we can do for you” and be sent to a “Pathways” operation to simply die. Similarly, when a pensioner needs a hip or knee, it simply isn’t worth the state spending the money...since that money could be MUCH BETTER spent on prenatal care for their (now mostly Muslim) pregnant women. They are not willing to spend the money for both, while we do (or, actually, did, prior to Obamacare).
And that is one of the reasons healthcare is more expensive here - 90 year olds get cancer treatments and hips, rather than being sent off to die, or condemned to a wheelchair.
That’s not how the Liverpool pathway works. 60000 people are on it or registered for it, and its voluntary. And for 99% of patients, it works.
Although we agree it has been abused in the last few years.
I admit that I’m a bit loose with the word “Pathways”, but it does give me the creeps when I hear the word, in any context.
But I also did hear (or read) a while ago that England does do what I described (i.e., saying they can’t do anymore), at least to an extent much more than the US does.
Interesting definitions of “liberty” in Europe.
The Germans will imprison parents who try and educate their children outside of the Nazi-era state educational system.
But in Britain, the worship of the state is so great that if a child is condemned to death by the NHS, their parents might be imprisoned if they try to get their child decent health care, thus saving their life.
No surprise in a country where at least 30,000 innocents and helpless people a year are “put down” at the order of the NHS.
The problem is that from the right in the US (like Fox News, FR, Breitbart, Rush, Savage) there is a lot of hysteria about this and their readers and listeners assume what they say is correct. And don’t bother even wiki-ing or googling it.
There HAS been abuse of the system, that much is clear. Appalling abuse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liverpool_Care_Pathway_for_the_Dying_Patient
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