In Britain’s NHS, A Death a Day Because the Doctor’s Away

Ted Bromund / March 20, 2009

It’s another day, another failure, for Britain’s National Health Service. America has some prominent congressional advocates of a “single payer” system of national health insurance run by the government. They always promise high quality care at low cost. But, in fact, it always comes at a high price. Britons who get sick, and have to try to live through it, pay for it at a steep personal cost to themselves and their families.

The report of conditions in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust in yesterday’s Times makes for grim reading. Receptionists with no clinical training assessed new arrivals. Patients waited hours for emergency treatment, and when thirsty had to drink water from flower vases. The pressure to meet arbitrary targets encouraged doctors and nurses to ignore seriously ill patients in order to attend minor, quicker to treat, cases. One senior doctor admitted to leaving a patient with an arm broken so badly that the bone stuck through the skin with no pain relief for four hours. (more…)