"Damning reports on the state of the National Health Service, suppressed by the government, reveal how patients' needs have been neglected," reports London's Sunday Times:
They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as the root cause of a string of hospital scandals that have cost thousands of lives.
The harsh verdict on the state of the NHS, after a spending splurge under Labour between 2000 and 2008, raises worrying questions about the future quality of the health service as budgets are squeezed.
The reports found that "a damaging rift between doctors and managers," "pointless new structures" and "a culture of fear and slavish compliance" led, among other results, to a disregard for "basic hygiene" so as "to cram in patients to meet waiting-time targets."
What we don't understand is why the government would suppress the reports. That makes it look as if officials have something to hide. Instead, they could have published the reports but put on the cover this authoritative disclaimer from 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."
Thank goodness these stories are false, because some of them, like this one from London's Daily Mail, are truly horrifying:
A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.
Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.
They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.
The next day his mother Rita Cronin found him delirious and he died within hours.
She said nurses had failed to give him vital drugs which controlled fluid levels in his body. 'He was totally dependent on the nurses to help him and they totally betrayed him.'
Meanwhile, here's a story of someone facing bankruptcy owing to medical costs. The twist is he's Canadian. From the Toronto Sun:
Suffering from brain cancer, Kent Pankow was literally forced to go to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. for lifesaving surgery--at a cost to family and friends of $106,000--after the health-care system in Alberta left him hanging in bureaucratic limbo for 16 crucial days, his tumour meanwhile migrating to an unreachable part of the brain, while it dithered over his case file, ultimately deciding he was not surgery worthy.
Now, with the Mayo Clinic having done what the Alberta Cancer Board wouldn't authorize or even explain, but with the tumour unable to be totally removed, the province will now not fund the expensive drug, Avastin, that the Mayo prescribed to keep him alive and keep the remaining tumour from increasing in size--despite the costs of the drug being totally funded by the province for other forms of cancer.
Kent Pankow, as it turns out, has the right disease but he has it in the wrong place.
Had he lung cancer, breast cancer, or colon cancer, then the cost of the drug--$4,555 per treatment, two times a month--would be totally covered by Alberta's version of OHIP [Ontario Health Insurance Plan].
But he doesn't.
And so he is not only a victim of brain cancer, he is also a victim of arbitrary discrimination.
The good news is that President Obama remains committed to bringing U.S. health care into line with Canadian standards. If he succeeds, sick Canadians will eventually be set free from the ruinous temptations of places like the Mayo Clinic.
And this is what the progressives want to bring the US down to. Amazing.