Showing posts with label socialized medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialized medicine. Show all posts

Monday, August 17, 2009

Daily Mail Horror Story: UK Health Care Left Me to Die

Buried in this article warning of the dangers of fake tanning, Why celebrities are to blame for women risking their lives in sunbed salons to look tanned, is a revealing nugget about UK's government-run socialized health care:

In November 2007, my consultant told me to go home and enjoy my last Christmas with my family - the cancer was aggressive and had spread so quickly that I had just four weeks to live.

Many tears were shed in our family after that announcement. But all I could think was that I had three beautiful children and I had to find a way to get treatment.

So I went on the internet and discovered that the life-extending cancer drug Avastin, which I'd been told would not be approved for my use in Britain due to the expense, was available in the U.S.

A few days later, my husband and I flew to the Mayo Hospital in Minnesota, which had agreed to treat me.

At the hospital I had more chemotherapy and was prescribed Avastin. We have had to pay thousands for the drug, but I've been in remission since earlier this year, so it's been worth every penny, especially as doctors here gave me a death sentence almost two years ago.

In a nutshell: The woman was refused live-saving cancer drugs in Britain because they were too expensive! They are available to patients in the US so she flew here and is alive 2 years after UK doctors told her she had weeks to live and there was nothing they could do!

Keep government health care away from the US!
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Tuesday, June 30, 2009

AIP Socialized Health Care Horror Stories: Cancer

With Obamacare increasingly becoming the focus in Washington, it is important to highlight the horrors of government-run universal health care in other countries so it can be stopped here.


Here's are two recent stories on how government health care affects cancer treatment:


UK:

The cancer divide: Men are most at risk because the NHS prefers saving women, says cancer expert
It revealed that among cancers which affect both sexes, men are 60 per cent more likely to develop the disease and 70 per cent more likely to die from it. ...


As a cancer specialist for the past 30 years, I found the study depressingly predictable. It has long been clear to me that we men are unfairly discriminated against by an NHS which has unfairly favoured female health matters ahead of the needs of male patients. ...


For the fact is that politicians, eager to court the female vote, have long presided over a huge disparity in funding and treatment of female cancer patients at the expense of their male counterparts. ...


The truth is that by treating the NHS as a political football to be kicked in whichever direction they judge will win them the most votes, politicians have added hugely to the disparity between male and female cancer survival rates. ...


I believe we need to look at financial incentives as a possible answer. Recently, private health insurers have started offering reduced premiums for subscribers who agree to join gyms, and even ‘no claims discounts’ for those who remain healthy. Why shouldn’t the NHS adopt a similar approach?...


From this example we can see that when the government controls health care, politicians will use it to get votes from favored constituencies - at the expense of the health of others. Notice also how the author approvingly cites the practices of private health care to encourage better health outcomes.


Canada:

OHIP cost cutting complicates cancer treatment

Interleukin-2 is a protein in the human body that stimulates the immune system and helps infection-fighting cells multiply and grow. It is used to treat certain types of cancers such as advanced melanoma and renal cancer. IL-2 was approved by Health Canada several years ago, but its use is not as widespread in Canada as it is in the United States.


OHIP covers pre-approved IL-2 treatments in the U.S. for Ontario residents who need it, but Hunt has been waiting to get the life-saving drug for two months....


He sought treatment in Detroit and had a consultation with an oncologist there but didn't get OHIP's approval to proceed because of a simple mistake in the paperwork, Meghan said.


Frustrated, the couple spent hours on the phone, calling doctors, the Ministry of Health and local politicians, hoping that someone could help them.


But while they were scrambling to secure Hunt's treatment in Detroit, there was a change in OHIP rules.


OHIP will now only cover Hunt's cancer treatment in Buffalo, N.Y., where the Roswell Park Cancer Institute is the ministry's only "preferred provider" of IL-2 treatment for metastatic malignant melanoma and renal cell carcinoma. The Ministry of Health has a number of funding agreements with out-of-country health care facilities, which are chosen based on specific criteria.


After much bureaucratic wrangling, Hunt will finally meet with specialists in Buffalo today and find out when he can begin treatment there. But he still doesn't understand why he and his family have to make the four-hour trip instead of simply crossing the border to get the same medical care in Detroit.



First of all, the fact that Canada is sending its patients to the U.S. for proper care should be enough of an indication of the failures of their system - where will Canadians go if the U.S. gets socialized health care? Second, this story demonstrates the red tape and government control of where people can seek treatment, which is based on cost, not necessarily on better care or patient comfort.


These are just two examples of many of how poorly run universal health care is for cancer patients. Next week, we'll take a look at other aspects of the system.


Originally posted at American Issues Project Blog.

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Slippery Slope in Action

The slippery slope is not just theoretical.

As the men quoted in these articles say, as long as euthanasia and the killing of disabled babies is encouraged in policy and law, the devaluation of human life will continue and allow for problems like this to occur. Not only is this an indictment on the culture of death, but also on socialized medicine.


UK Medical Staff Declare Disabled Man Not Worth Saving From Heart Attack


In an incident that pro-life advocates say is the slippery slope that results from legalizing assisted suicide or euthanasia, two medical staffers in England have been arrested for reportedly deciding that the life of a disabled man was not worth saving after he had a heart attack. ...

When the unnamed medics arrived at Baker's home, they found him collapsed on the floor and the phone line was still open and recording their conversations. Baker died after the incident.

A police source told the London Times that the medics were heard discussing how they didn't want to revive Baker saying “words to the effect that he was not worth saving."

They were also heard discussing what to say to authorities and decided to give a story saying Baker had died prior to their arrival at his home.

..."The next time you are tempted to scoff at folk with disabilities who worry that they many people think their lives are not worth living, remember this story," he said. ...

"Friends and colleagues who have disabilities report similar stories of disdain occurring here when seeking medical care, for example, of people on ventilators being pressured to sign DNRs by hospital personnel even though they were not undergoing usually life-threatening procedures," he explains.

"Human exceptionalism demands that each of us be deemed to be of equal objective moral worth. It is an ideal we have never achieved, admittedly. But unless bigotry against people with disabilities is especially shocking when it impacts care in the medical context," Smith added.



British Hospital Allows Down Syndrome Patient to Starve to Death Over 26 Days

In a scandal that is causing a massive outcry, a British hospital has allowed a Down syndrome patient to starve to death over a 26 day period. Martin Ryan, who could not swallow after a stroke, was allowed to lie in a bed and starve to death without receiving any medical care.

...The query found that doctors thought staff nurses were feeding him with a feeding tube in his nose, but by the time anyone realized that had not happened for weeks, Ryan was took weak for a surgery to insert a gastronomy tube in his stomach.

...A report by the Mencap charity following the incident found the British governmental health service has also failed other people with mental difficulties, citing a young woman denied cancer treatment and a young man who died during treatment for a broken leg.

Anthony Ozimic, the political secretary of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, a British pro-life group, told LifeNews.com the British government must be held accountable for what is becoming routine discrimination against the mentally disabled.

"Mencap has identified institutional discrimination within Britain's healthcare services against people with learning disabilities," he said. "Yet lethal institutional discrimination against the disabled and vulnerable is enshrined in law and policy, particularly in the pro-euthanasia Mental Capacity Act which Mencap supported."

"Disabled adults will continue to die because of discriminatory attitudes whilst the Mental Capacity Act and the killing of disabled unborn children, which manifest those attitudes, remain law," Ozimic added.

Related post:

What the culture of abortion on demand has wrought