“This is sad. I have an elderly relative possibly at the end of her life, in the hospital in queens right now. I hope they are giving her enough fluids,”
But the fact that you don’t know or care enough to know about this elderly relative is the real problem, whether in the socialized UK system, or the mostly socialized US system.
If you are willing to leave a relative to the care of people you do not know and have no reason to trust - and more importantly that are not paid by you - then who is really to blame?
If your relative dies of dehydration, will you even care, or will you simply complain of “awful nurses”?
Hospitals are a bureaucracy - they are also a bottom-line business in the end - that is poorly funded by the large part of patients that are on some government socialized medical insurance program.
Bureaucracies can do awful, horrible things that would land individuals in jail.
Individuals who simply don’t care can also, through inaction, do horrible things by counting on bureaucracy to do the things that they should do themselves.
So who is better? You, or a nurse who is given an impossible workload and cannot possibly take care of a patient in a way everyone cares to want (but nobody wishes to pay to accomplish)?
Good luck to your elderly relative - with nurses who may not be able to take care of them properly, and relatives who won’t take care of them properly, it’s a wonder they aren’t dead already.
You really hurt me. That was cruel of you. She is a great aunt and I love her very much but she has always lived in NY and I live in LA. I have 3 kids and pregnant with a 4 th so I can’t be in NY caring for her. I will always be there for my own parents. I think you were needlessly cruel to me.