Ungland...
Posted on 11/28/2012 4:07:49 PM PST by bruinbirdman
Patients experience “coldness, resentment, indifference" and "even contempt” in some hospitals, the Health Secretary has claimed in a hard-hitting speech about NHS care.
In the worse cases staff have overseen “a kind of normalisation of cruelty”, Jeremy Hunt told an audience of health professionals at The King’s Fund, a London-based think-tank.
Managers were so “buried in spreadsheets” that they had become “blind” to the fact that patients were not being treated with dignity or respect, he said.
Poor care had become “perhaps the biggest problem of all facing the NHS”, Mr Hunt claimed in his strongest speech yet on the NHS, almost three months into his tenure as Health Secretary.
He promised that top officials would lose their jobs if care was not good enough, just as they did now if they lost control of finances.
“Accountability must be stretched to the top,” he said.
In a passionate speech, Mr Hunt cited numerous examples of appalling NHS care.
He said: “Just look at what has come to light in the last few years: patients left to lie in their own excrement in Stafford Hospital, with members of the public taking soiled sheets home to wash because they didn’t believe the hospital would do it.
“The man with dementia who was supposed to be monitored every 15 minutes who managed to leave Pontypool Hospital and drown.
“The residents kicked punched, humiliated, dragged by their hair and forced through cold showers at Winterbourne View.
“The elderly woman with dementia repeatedly punched and slapped at Ash Court Care Home.
“The cancer patient at St George’s, Tooting, who lost a third of his body fluid, desperately ringing the police for help, because staff didn't listen or check his medical records.”
These were not “isolated incidents”, he said, but appeared with such “depressing regularity” that
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Paints a pretty picture doesn’t it? Coming soon to your town...January 2014
Ungland...
Its not new either. Nevil Shute wrote several novels slamming British socialism in the 50s.
The Far Country (1952): A young woman travels to Australia. A condemnation of British socialism and the national health service.
And yet when you tell an Englishman that the nhs system needed to be completely scrapped and replaced with a free market system, they recoil in horror.
But, as long as the politicians inform the public that they are aware of the problems, and tell the public that they really, truly sincerely care... they don’t have to do a danged thing to fix the problems. Because they care. No one who cares ever has to actually do anything.
The UK is a great example of what happens when people depend on the government for a service that should be provided privately—no matter how bad the service is, they’re terrified of it being taken away.
Yes, when your turd no longer shines, just keep polishing away.
And we wonder why the Canadians are moving away from collectivist deathcare.
The bigger and more brutal government gets, the more desperately people cling to that government.
Death spiral of a civilization.
A Brit who used to post here reacted that way when I told him we don't have govt trash collection where I live.
He was firmly convinced that govt trash collection was "more efficient."
From what he said, I think he had a vision in his mind of traffic gridlock caused by thousands of garbage trucks.
It's sad how scary freedom seems to some people.
In the UK, rubbish is collected by the local councils weekly. Paid for by residents through local taxes.
The average Brit dosent rate the US system, and finds it one that is fine as long as you can pay for it. Most British people have heard horror stories of people refused treatment because they dont have money, because most British people dont know about Medicare,. Medicaid etc, free hospitals.
Both the UK and US have ignorance of each other’s systems. The Brits think its all pay now or die in the US, Americans here only the horror stories of the NHS and many Americans probably (wrongly) think the UK dosent have private healthcare.
As per the NHS, based on the above dislike of the US system, and that the NHS has existed for nearly 70 years, the vast majority of the UK dose not want to get rid of the NHS, as they believe (and as a conservative, I support this view overall albeit with reservations) that, for its undoubted faults, it is a system worth keeping.
British people are well aware of the NHS’s faults, and that it needs reform, in some cases drastic reform, they support however its basic and original premise.
Death spiral of a civilization.
Indeed. Politicians are like drug pushers, and citizens are the drug addicts. Forty seven percent of the country is addicted.
On the other hand, my trash is picked up weekly by a private contractor, for a fee. Nearly every week I get flyers from competitors, offering their deal, and I can fire my trash company whenever I want if a better deal comes along.
I get this for $42/qtr.
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