Jack Tagg and the home he must sell to pay for treatment to help save his sight
Jack Tagg as a Second World War pilot
Posted on 02/16/2008 3:09:04 PM PST by fanfan
Doctors have launched an internet campaign to shame Gordon Brown over a war hero who has been told he will have to go blind in one eye before he will get NHS treatment.
More than 100 GPs have sent £5 cheques to Downing Street, made out to the Prime Minister, which they want to be put towards the cost of a cure for Second World War pilot Jack Tagg.
Mr Tagg, 88, suffers from "wet" macular degeneration, the main cause of sight loss in Britain, affecting a quarter of a million people. It can lead to blindness in as little as three months - but with prompt treatment it can be reversed.
Now he and his wife Gabrielle, 77, are selling their house to pay for an £11,000 course of injections.
Last week, Mr Tagg was told by a consultant at Torbay District General Hospital in Torquay that a course of injections of the Lucentis drug could save his sight.
But at £760 a shot, for a course of between three and 14 injections, he was told that under Government guidelines it was regarded as "too expensive" unless he was already blind in one eye.
Mr Tagg, who was a member of the RAF Balloon Command during the war and flew Wellington bombers, went for his first privately-funded injections on Friday.
He said: "I am selling up under protest. If I have to go for the full treatment it will end up costing me about &£11,000."
Martin Wrankin, a friend and GP, placed an open letter to the Prime Minister on a doctors-only internet site, saying the case typified "the incompetence of your Labour Government in managing the NHS".
The letter continued: "Jack is not a wealthy man but his wife has decided that they must sell their house to pay for the treatment. He risked his life for us ...we believe that our patients would prefer you to spend a few thousand pounds on Jack in his hour of need.
"The doctors who have added their names to this list will all post on a cheque for £5 payable to Mr Gordon Brown. We don't expect you to get Jack his treatment on the NHS. We would simply ask you to cash our cheques and forward the lump sum to Mr Tagg."
Jack Tagg as a Second World War pilot
More than 120 doctors have signed up to his campaign so far. Many have also posted messages of support, including one who wrote that "it has got to be worth a fiver to kick Gordon's gluteal muscles".
The row will be embarrassing for Mr Brown, who suffered from eye damage when he was a 17-year-old student at Edinburgh University.
Despite three operations to repair detached retinas, aggravated by a rugby injury, he was left blind in his left eye, although a fourth procedure successfully saved the sight in his right eye.
The cost today to the taxpayer of his four NHS operations would be £5,588.
Mr Tagg added: "When I went for my treatment, there was a lady of 60 with the same condition who had been forced to wait until one eye went. They referred to her injections as 'treating the last eye'."
Mr Tagg said he blamed the Government for his predicament --not the hospital staff.
"The frontline staff are amazingly good. It's the system which is at fault.
"I was told that you can't put two pints into a pint pot, meaning there was not enough money to pay for everything."
But Dr Wrankin said that Mr Tagg's sight could be restored by the NHS for substantially less than the projected amount.
He said: "There is a treatment for bowel cancer which is also effective for macular degeneration and could be delivered for a fraction of the cost, but the organisation of the Health Service is too poor to achieve it."
Last night, a spokesman for the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence said: "Until we issue our guidelines on the drug treatment of wet macular degeneration in six weeks' time, hospital trusts should make their own treatment decisions."
A spokesman for the Royal National Institute of Blind People said: "People are having to face a stark choice - either pay for private treatment, or risk going blind. How can we be allowing this to happen in Britain in 2008?"
This is crazy.
But I am sure nothing like this would ever happen under Universal Health Care! /sarc
Jack Tagg and the home he must sell to pay for treatment to help save his sight
Jack Tagg as a Second World War pilot
One thing I can say is many doctors do try to circumvent the system to get patients healthcare. I have had it done for me many many times.
“...the incompetence of your Labour Government in managing the NHS”.
Ridiculous. No government could effectively manage the NHS. Socialized medicine has built-in flaws that are irreparable. Just wait ‘til we get Hillary-care. The same morons who vote for this idiocy will be the first to line up to crucify those who are incapable of managing it, as if such a thing were possible.
And somehow the blame will manage to fall on those who opposed it in the first place, blame that will be reinforced by the willing accomplices in the MSM.
No universal health care.
I hope this man will get the treatment he needs before its too late.
Doctors are just as frustrated as the patients.
In this article, over 100 GPs have sent 5 pound checks to Downing Street, and I bet Gordon Brown cashes them, the b@st@rd.
The problem is the government and bureaucracy being involved in health care to begin with.
How maddening it all is.
Can’t a doctor treat him for free or is that forbidden under universal healthcare?
I regularly receive similar injections into my eye for a related condition and shudder to think what might happen to me, and others like me, under hillary-care or barryhussein-care.
Good luck to your Mom. :-)
I guess so, but it would cost $22,000, and doctors aren't made of money.
Maybe Bill Gates could give him the respect he deserves, (pay for the operation), but, I forgot, he's more interested in helping the UN.
Nothing.
And that, my FRiend, is the problem.
No care for you!
Good luck with your treatment, btw.
Well it all comes down to who should pay.
Does this man have children? Where are they? Why aren’t they doing something about it?
Why is it everyone else’s problem to pay?
Well it all comes down to who should pay.
Exactly.
Why is it everyone else’s problem to pay?
The tax payers seem to pay for it, but in reality, the man pays thousands of pounds/dollars to his government every year to provide him with health care.
I'm not sure about England, but in Canada, there are very few health services that can be purchased, by law.
Is the line too long?
Die, or come up with the money for a medical tourism trip.
Coming soon, to a freedom near you.
Here is the reverse side of the SAME coin in the USA.
An out of work, officially classified as disabled for joint problems and being told to live on about $400 a month income an over 60-year old, also had REALLY heavy cataracts in both eyes - plus Glaucoma.
Under county rules, he qualified as an indigent and after trials and tribulations received authorization to have cataract surgery on one eye, (logical one eye at a time?)
Not so. When applying for the second eye so that the remaining cataract could be removed and would not impair the now “good eye” with glare, he was told that they would only pay for one eye as he could now get around to a degree and was not longer technically “blind”.
The second eye surgery, which would allow him to drive easily again and pursue part time work opportunities he had had to turn down previously was being refused and thus he was denied the means to earn meager revenues from there that would extend his $400.
The amount involved for the second surgery was only about $4000, not a huge amount to help restore someone to a more “viable” member of society.
Final resolution was a surgeon who waived most of her fee and a retired friend with scant means of his own sending out an Email to a list of his friends and passing the hat.
Contributions anged from $10 to about $50 - as none of the contributers had money either. Eventually, with still $700 needed to pay for the surgery, a retired military officer sent acheck for the balance.
The “crazy” comment is well -deserved at both sides of this merciless, mindless cruelty to the very needy, who cannot fend for themeselves financially. Perhaps for life threatening challenges.
“Why is it everyone else’s problem to pay?”
I am not sure where anyone has said they are being forced to pay and that it is a problem. People are volunteering to pay, from what the article says. Such behavior is still legal in the UK.
Oh that is right over 1/2 the people who were asked in a UK Poll thought that Winston Churchill was a fictional character.
Too bad the Brits don’t have Hillary running things. Then there’s be no problem getting his treatment I’m sure. /sarc
Avastin is much cheaper. I don't know if it works as well as Lucentis, but it's based on the same idea.
Therapeutic anti-VEGF antibodies.
(Lucentis and Avastin) and AMD gets another fifteen articles at PubMed.
Jabs?
Injections.
*sigh*
Indeed it is!
My feeling is every single allied soldier still alive from WW2 should have free medical care no matter WHAT it is!
If there’s no money it should be raised. If it can’t be they should be able to get their needs met in other allied nations...perhaps some countries have the resources for certain procedures but not others and vice versa in other countries.
USA, GB, France, Australia, Canada even Israel, Germany and Japan should pool resources and do what’s necessaary to take care of ALL these folks!
IN FACT, obscenely rich TV personalities, sports figures, Bill Gates types, etc. should be greatly ASHAMED that they’re not literally CLAMMORING over themselves for the sheer PRIVELEGE of helping this man financially!
Under county rules, he qualified as an indigent and after trials and tribulations received authorization to have cataract surgery on one eye, (logical one eye at a time?)
Actually, yes.
My Mom has the same condition, and they did her eyes one at a time.
In this case it’s not so much about money. He pays the government for his health care, and they won’t deliver.
You don’t have socialized health care, so people band together, and provide it. That is the meaning of charity.
May God Bless the United States, and may you keep your freedoms as a beacon to the world.
Amazing, eh?
That is a heartbreaking story about governmental stupidity. Then comes the goodness of the individuals who stepped in to made it happen.
Come on now. “he pays his government for his health care?”
We pay for social services with our taxes and lots of them and it is not a matter of health care but delivering adequate services.
Like the insurance comoanies that try to deny procedures till it is too late, the county uses panel of semi-professionals, nurses at best, headed by some General Practioner without enough medical knowledge to make the decisions on a financial basis, not medical considerations.
How can you say “crazy” there and not here?
This is England and National Health Service. Coming soon to America.
Fan, that is not the worse of it. The same poll that showed more people thinking that Churchill was fictional also thought that Sherlock Holmes was a real person.
The incompetence of the very concept.
You also overlook that “one eye at a time” is logical if both eyes get surgery. BUT they refused to pay for the second eye, making your reasoning illogical and not applicable for apologizing for them and not anything to do with medical reality.
Just an excuse to INEXCUSABLY deny adequate medical procedure
Winston Churchill didn’t really exist, say teens
By Aislinn Simpson
Last Updated: 1:53am GMT 04/02/2008
A fifth of British teenagers believe Sir Winston Churchill was a fictional character, while many think Sherlock Holmes, King Arthur and Eleanor Rigby were real, a survey shows.
Glory days of the Navy captured by a serving sailor
The canvass of 3,000 under-twenties uncovered an extraordinary paucity of basic historical knowledge that older generations take for granted.
A fifth of teens surveyed thought Sir Winston Churchill to be fictional
Despite his celebrated military reputation, 47 per cent of respondents dismissed the 12th-century crusading English king Richard the Lionheart as fictional.
More than a quarter (27 per cent) thought Florence Nightingale, the pioneering nurse who coaxed injured soldiers back to health in the Crimean War, was a mythical figure.
In contrast, a series of fictitious characters that have featured in British films and literature over the past few centuries were awarded real-life status.
King Arthur is the mythical figure most commonly mistaken for fact - almost two thirds of teens (65 per cent) believe that he existed and led a round table of knights at Camelot.
Sherlock Holmes, the detective, was so convincingly brought to life in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels, their film versions and television series, that 58 per cent of respondents believe that the sleuth really lived at 221B Baker Street.
Fifty-one per cent of respondents believed that Robin Hood lived in Sherwood Forest, robbing the rich to give to the poor, while 47 per cent believed Eleanor Rigby was a real person rather than a creation of The Beatles.
advertisementThe study also shows a marked change in how people acquire their historical knowledge these days. More than three-quarters of those polled (77 per cent) admitted they did not read history books, and 61 per cent said that they changed channels rather than watch historical programmes on television.
Paul Moreton, the channel head of UKTV Gold, which commissioned the poll, said that while there was no excuse for demoting real historical figures such as Churchill, the elevation of mythical figures to real life showed the impact good films could have in shaping the public consciousness.
“Stories like Robin Hood are so inspiring that it’s not surprising people like to believe these characters truly existed,” he said.
Information appearing on telegraph.co.uk is the copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited and must not be reproduced in any medium without licence. For the full copyright statement see Copyright
I hesitated to post that because I thought you might read it that way. I should have scrapped it and started again.
You have a good point, we are all suffering under the bureaucracy of so called health care providers.
So, the question becomes, how do we take health care back?
“They” fund sex change operations, abortions, and crack pipes, but won’t save a citizen’s sight?
Crazy is right.
I wasn’t questioning you, I had read the article as well.
Otoh, I’m glad you posted it for those who haven’t read it.
Communism at work. When the government controls all healthcare spending it controls your very life.
Hillary, Obama, and McInsane are all die-hard Communists who support this kind of bullshit.
I agree, Fars.
I was simply answering what I thought was a question about whether doing one eye at a time is standard practise.
Totally!
We ain't much better either. Thank God we don't have Universal Health Care ...yet.
Never in the field of human conflict has so little been paid to so few for so much.
and he's left to go blind for all they care.
Your post: “I was pretty sure you had seen the article. I posted it to illustrate the nonsense going on over there.
We ain’t much better either. Thank God we don’t have Universal Health Care ...yet.”
But we do have the cause of their “nonsense”, which is government schools. Government schools, in their race to bring everyone down to the lowest level have given us an ignorant population — and voter base. As a result, we’ll soon have government medical care, which will again bring everyone down to the level level.
This guy’s story is typical of how government makes decisions. Don’t expect anything better than we get from Gummint Skules.
Your post: “I was pretty sure you had seen the article. I posted it to illustrate the nonsense going on over there.
We ain’t much better either. Thank God we don’t have Universal Health Care ...yet.”
But we do have the cause of their “nonsense”, which is government schools. Government schools, in their race to bring everyone down to the lowest level have given us an ignorant population — and voter base. As a result, we’ll soon have government medical care, which will again bring everyone down to the level level.
This guy’s story is typical of how government makes decisions. Don’t expect anything better than we get from Gummint Skules.
Thanks FARS.
25%.
And it was a poll of teens.
I fear if we asked the children in the US they would not be able to name more than 3 of our Founding Fathers.
There is absolutely, completely and totally nothing unusual about this decision whatsoever. This is EXACTLY the point of decision in a socialized medicine situation.
Where you have a fixed cost you can either drop quality or drop quantity of service? And even with the generally low quality, they still have to make decisions about who NOT to treat everyday. And if you think you don’t like HMOs then you’re really going to hate the government bureaucrat who will be doing the exact same job on your case.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
