Obamacare dehumanizes "we the people" into a line item on a budget.
Once we out live our ability to pay taxes, we can be "cut"
Top British doctor's chilling claim: The National Health Service kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year. Is this going to happen in a future America,under Obamacare?
Steverno~POTL~PWCM~JLA
2012/06/21 16:17:35
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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.
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.
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.
There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP.
Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.
He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors.
He cited ‘pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients’ as factors.
Professor Pullicino revealed he had personally intervened to take a patient off the LCP who went on to be successfully treated.
He said this showed that claims they had hours or days left are ‘palpably false’.
He said this showed that claims they had hours or days left are ‘palpably false’.
In the example he revealed a 71-year-old who was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia and epilepsy was put on the LCP by a covering doctor on a weekend shift.
Read More: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2161869/To...
Top Opinion
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Farnsworth 2012/06/21 16:26:03
http://youtu.be/3S9dwP-fV3o
I was dead on, no pun intended.
In the future, we will either get REAL healthcare reform (which destroys the insurance industry as we know it), or we have private/voluntary system that exists today. Lots of faults either way.
Private insurers already have their own version of LCP, but the implementation is subtle. Policy limits are reached, or the patient loses the job (and eventually COBRA) upon which insurance was purchased. And if all else fails, "managed care" finds ways to curtail hospitalization and refuses to cover treatments.
It's a bit more obvious in the UK, but any government-run system is going to do what the insurers have been doing all along -- phase out the expensive end-of-life treatments. As with any government program, "special" people get special treatment, and others get what administrators feel like doling out.
The problem is that government-run systems are virtually exempt from liability. How often do Brits sue the NHS? I don't like the American concept of abusive malpractice suits, but they provide checks and balances to a system in which life and death would be decided arbitrarily if not for the fear of getting sued.
In a nutshell managed care is bad Government manages care is far worse
We can get bad docs out of the system by online ratings from patients. But that tactic won't help with problems caused by the insurance oligopoly or a single-payer government system.
It's hard to believe government can do any worse than the insurance industry's version of managed care. But the NHS experience indicates this is quite possible.
cynical - not synical
verbiage - not verbage
Or is that the way you liberal Brits spell things?
This is the only other place I found it in the U.K.:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/he...
This is some info on him:
http://www.kent.ac.uk/bio/pul...
I have been using the NHS all my life and whilst they operate the bright shiny places that private hospitals are, they are functional and effective, and the staff are fantastic.
For example in just the last 15years:
I broke my leg in four places and had to have a metal plate to hold my shin together, I was in hospital for four days.
My daughter was born at 26 weeks gestation and was instantly put into the Special Care Baby Unit where she remained touch and go for 4 weeks and was finally allowed to return home, after receiving fantastically dedicated care, after three months with an oxygen cylinder for four more weeks.
My son was run over on the way to school just before Christmas. His head Bullseyed the car's windscreen, but luckily he bounced off onto a grass verge, rather than a hard pavement. The ambulance arrived in 15 minutes and he was kept in for o...
I have been using the NHS all my life and whilst they operate the bright shiny places that private hospitals are, they are functional and effective, and the staff are fantastic.
For example in just the last 15years:
I broke my leg in four places and had to have a metal plate to hold my shin together, I was in hospital for four days.
My daughter was born at 26 weeks gestation and was instantly put into the Special Care Baby Unit where she remained touch and go for 4 weeks and was finally allowed to return home, after receiving fantastically dedicated care, after three months with an oxygen cylinder for four more weeks.
My son was run over on the way to school just before Christmas. His head Bullseyed the car's windscreen, but luckily he bounced off onto a grass verge, rather than a hard pavement. The ambulance arrived in 15 minutes and he was kept in for observation for 2 days. Thankfully he only came home with bruises and nothing more.
My mother (87yrs) receives her hearing aids free and they are checked and/or upgraded every 6 months.
There is more but you get the idea.
Sorry to go on, but we have received all this payed for by our taxes. We also have access to a doctor at the local surgery, which we attend as and when we need to.
I dread to think how much this would have cost us, if we had been required to pay at the time, or how much our insurance premiums would be by now.
I am so very concerned that in your country there are vested interests making so much money out of healthcare, that they have the most to lose should you gain universal healthcare, so they will lie and cheat, and disparage the efficacy of our NHS to frighten Americans away from the idea.