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IN the UK Waiting room times appear tyo be 4 hours due to statistical slight of hand. There is a policy which limits ED waits to 4 hours. If the back up exceeds 4 hours people are warehoused in ambulances or in other departments of the hospital. Since they are not in the ED they are not counted against the wait, but on the other hand they are not treated. You had asked for an article discussing the deniual of life giving meds. I gave you an article on the denial of life giving meds. I am uin thge process of getting the research on The NICE denial of care based on cost. My Step Daughter HAs a general practice physician and a referral. Do NOT tell me what my child experienced. You have NO Clue. It took 7 months of agony to get an MRI. That is documented. I find it insulting that you think I have some ulterior motive in speaking the truth. MY work has little to with the medical profession. As to the quality of UK Medical care I ran across the following this morning on the WSJ Web Site: See The Best of the Web: Two for the Price of One Patricia Pearson is lucky she wasn't in England when her appendix burst. London's Daily Telegraph reports that the National Health Service gave Mark Wattson two government appendectomies for the price of one: Mr Wattson, 35, had his first appendectomy on Tuesday, July 7, after being told that his appendix was the cause of abdominal pain he had suffered for several months. He said that doctors informed him that the procedure had gone well. He was discharged the next day. Yet a month later, Mr Wattson was taken to hospital after collapsing in Swindon town centre. He was told by doctors at Great Western Hospital--where his original operation had taken place--that his appendix had burst and that he needed an emergency appendectomy. He was readmitted for surgery and released following the second--successful--operation on August 9. The Telegraph reports that Wattson "claims that he lost his job because his employers did not believe that he needed to have the operation twice." Look on the bright side, Mark: You might have lost your job, but at least you didn't lose your health insurance. The Daily Mail, meanwhile, reports that "thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds": The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets--even a caravan--went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000. Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full. Now, in fairness, this isn't quite as bad as it sounds. When Brits say babies are being born in "toilets," they mean "rest rooms," not the fixtures therein. ("Lifts" are elevators and "a caravan" is a trailer.) Anyway, don't worry. According to former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, "In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We've all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false." As a Monty Python doctor once asked, "Any other problems I can reassure you about?"

Posted in: Is the turbulent health care debate bad for the Jews?

08/23/09 08:52 PM

As far as denying life giving drugs are concerned I would refer you to the British Medical Journal. The Article cited is far too long to be reproduced here however the link is: www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=487742 You have a similar issue as far as life expectancy is concerned. In the US we treat newborn infants who are in distress. In nations with socialized systems they do not. By choosing to treat seriously ill newborns we can salvage some, unfortunately others die; The ones who pass are counted against infant mortality statistics. In socialized systems these children are untreated and they all die. They are counted as still born and are excluded from the stats on infant mortality. This again boosts the performance of these systems as against the US system. You do not talk about other illnesses such as cancer. I am somewhat familiar with with the Quebec medical system. My wife is a Montreal native. Her kids still live in the Montreal area. I took ill several years ago and needed to make an ER visit to the local hospital. I was seen within 1/2 hour. My Step daughter has serious nut allegeries. She accidently comsumed some products containing nut traces. (Given her usual care in this no one is quite sure how it happened) There was a three hour wait. Thank God she had her epipen. The UK has a statute that mandate no long than a 4 hour wait for service in hospital emergency rooms. The problem, is that waits can be much long than that. In order to get around the statute people are warehoused in ambulances. actual waits typically are 6 to 8 hours. Canada has fewer diagnostic machines per 100.000 people and fewer treatment slots. My other Step Daughter had chronic back issues. It took her 7 months to get an appointment to get an MRI. In the states waiting more than a few days is unheard of. For this daughter the delay meant months of extra pain, but she recovered. If one has cancer the dalay can mean that one moves from having a treatable illness to a terminal one. Canada also has fewer cancer treatment slots per 100,000. This again means delays of months in treatment after diagnosis. There are times when waits exceeed 6 months anbd people are sent to NY State for treatment. This results in a 30% higher death rate from cancer in Canada over the US. What good is health coverage if you can not get timely treatment?

Posted in: Is the turbulent health care debate bad for the Jews?

08/21/09 09:40 AM

I read Ari's post and he posits 3 questions; 1) Which country anywhere has any form of forced euthanasia 2) Why they all have better life expectancies, despite the death panels 3) Whether you were against death panels when they were first introduced by Reps? I would like to answer them in order. On the euthansia issue. Two points. Oregon has an assiosted suicide law and a single payer state wide insurance system. Cancewr patients have recieved letters from the Oregon insurance authorities telling them that the system will not pay for their cancer treatments but will pay for their suicide drugs. Futhrmore in the UK there is the National Institute foir Clinical Excellence (NICE) NICE decides what treatments the national Health Service will pay for and which it will not. If a treatment costs more than $22,000 to extend life 6 months, it will not be covered. What is the differencve to the patient if he or she is refused treatment and dies or is actively killed? As to the life expectancy issue, there is a reason for that. The US has a much higher homicide ad fatal auto accident rate than in the rest of the developed world. For example our Homicide rate is 8 times that of France. Adjust for these factors and the US compares quite favorably with any industrialized country. The current end of life counseling deals with things like living wills and medical directives and the like. There are firm statutory guidlines as to what the counseling is to be about. The proposed death panels have no guidelines They will be governed by a commission modeled on NICE. One wonders what advice they might give considering that the p[oint of the commission is to contain costs.

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Posted in: Is the turbulent health care debate bad for the Jews?

Posted in: Is the turbulent health care debate bad for the Jews?

Posted in: Is the turbulent health care debate bad for the Jews?

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