The Sadistic Brutality of England’s Government-Run Healthcare

Townhall.com ^ | December 2, 2012 | Daniel J. Mitchell

[Kaslin]

I’m not easily grossed out or nauseated. Heck, I’m on email lists for a half-dozen softball teams and you can only imagine the strange/filthy/nasty things that guys send to each other.

But I read a story about the death panels in the United Kingdom that left me discombobulated. I can’t even begin to describe how I feel.

Here’s the intro of a disturbing report in the Daily Mail.

Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’. Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults. But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.

And here are some of the horrifying details. Read at your own risk.

One doctor has admitted starving and dehydrating ten babies to death in the neonatal unit of one hospital alone. Writing in a leading medical journal, the physician revealed the process can take an average of ten days during which a  baby becomes ‘smaller and shrunken’. The LCP – on which 130,000 elderly and terminally-ill adult patients die each year – is now the subject of an independent inquiry ordered by ministers. …Earlier this month, an un-named doctor wrote of the agony of watching the protracted deaths of babies. …‘I know, as they cannot, the unique horror of witnessing a child become smaller and shrunken, as the only route out of a life that has become

 

excruciating to the patient or to the parents who love their baby.’ …Bernadette Lloyd, a hospice paediatric nurse, has written to the Cabinet Office and the Department of Health to criticise the use of death pathways for children. She said: ‘The parents feel coerced, at a very traumatic time, into agreeing that this is correct for their child whom they are told by doctors has only has a few days to live. It is very difficult to predict death. I have seen a “reasonable” number of children recover after being taken off the pathway. …‘I have also seen children die in terrible thirst because fluids are withdrawn from them until they die. ‘I witnessed a 14 year-old boy with cancer die with his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth when doctors refused to give him liquids by tube. His death was agonising for him, and for us nurses to watch. This is euthanasia by the backdoor.’

My first reaction is to hope that this story is wildly wrong, filled with exaggerations and lies.

My second reaction (and this is why I got so agitated) is to imagine what it must be like for the parents. They get talked into letting their kids die, which must be agonizing, and then (assuming they stick around) they have to watch them slowly starve to death or die of thirst. Wouldn’t it be better to just give your kid a fatal injection? Setting aside the moral issue of deciding to let a kid die because he’s disabled or something like that, doesn’t simple decency mean that death should be painless rather than agonizing?

My final reaction is to wonder what Paul Krugman would say about this scandalous neglect and mistreatment. During the Obamacare debate, he told us we could ignore stories about what was happening across the ocean, writing that “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.” So I guess starving children don’t qualify as a scare story.

P.S. If you want more horror stories about government-run healthcare in the United Kingdom click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

[rotundusmaximus]

thanks for posting

[rotundusmaximus]

thanks for posting

[rotundusmaximus]

thanks for posting

[rotundusmaximus]

thanks for posting

[rotundusmaximus]

thanks for posting

[rotundusmaximus]

thanks for posting

[rotundusmaximus]

thanks for posting

[Rider on the Rain]

You still need a prescription.

[Rider on the Rain]

You thanked him 10 freepen times.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

You need a prescription to get those antibiotics though.

[HangnJudge]

You still need a prescription.

Hmmm...

1/5 Vodka
100mg Valium
160mg Oxycontin
Plastic Bag

+/- 200mg Seconol,

Yup, that's the ticket

Or one could accept,
with Gratitude and Humility
The Gift of this Existence

All of It

[unixfox]

All you need to know about "FREE" healthcare can be found in the Tuskegee experiments.

The Tuskegee syphilis experiment[1] (also known as the Tuskegee syphilis study or Public Health Service syphilis study) was an infamous clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama by the U.S. Public Health Service to study the natural progression of untreated syphilis in poor, rural black men who thought they were receiving free health care from the U.S. government.[1]

Sure, I trust the U.S. government. NOT.

The Tuskegee Experiment

[HangnJudge]

You need a prescription to get those antibiotics though.

He was at the Doctor already.
What permission does He/She need?
I assume the Precert was for the Z-pak as it can be pricey

BTW, I'm generally in favor of Pharmacist Prescriptions for Antibiotics
Cut out the Hassle and Middle-Man

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Again, couldn’t agree more.

I shouted about the cultural and legislative impacts of that case then and continue to do so today.

Whatever the left supports, multiply it by ten million.

One Terri case is a national interest, a cause.

Ten million is NAZI Germany, and now, their academic heirs, Socialist England, and soon, the USSA.

Incidentally, this is why I will never support Jeb Bush. He had the ability and the stage to make a case for life out of Terri Schiavo’s case. But he rolled over, either because he doesn’t really believe in the sanctity of human life or because he was looking ahead to future political races and just wanted to wash his hands of the matter, not unlike Pontius Pilate.

[TWhiteBear]

nice cartoon.
The Death Panels are in England and are coming here soon.
It would be even more efficient to put the defective people that Mr. Obama has selected, in camps.
TWB

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

And let us not forget (and pound into the brain of every liberal we met), as Illinois state senator, Obama took the podium not once, not twice, but three times not to argue for mere abortion, but in ardent support of legislation that would force doctors to starve to death babies that survived an abortion.

That’s right. In his view of the state, babies that survive a failed attempt at an abortion should be put on a gurney and wheeled into a closet until they die.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Another point argued by Goodman in “Lives at Risk” is that Socialist medicine, at best, provides good care but horrible cure for patients.

That is, the government has a vested interest in hiring tens of thousands of citizens to work for the government-run healthcare system to deliver meals and blankets and aspirin, etc. (that is, to “care” for the sick). This is inexpensive and helps the employment rate without really doing too much.

Where socialist medicine fails is in the cure department. Curing people of disease is costly, and a government must make the fiscal decision of whether the outlay will result in a net financial loss to the system or a financial gain if the patient survives and can return to the work force long enough to repay the outlay.

This story proves that socialist is also failing miserably in the “care” department.

One other point is that eugenics has long been part of the utopian goal of leftists/progressives/communists/socialists/statists (whatever you want to call those to the left.

Controlling healthcare (just listen to the word, it sounds like they are caring) is the ultimate Orwellian means of culling the population and creating a citizenry (sheep farm) of only those the State deems worthy of serving them.

[miss marmelstein]

Geez...”the pathway”...how our beautiful language can be used for utter evil.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Note also that these babies are put on the “pathway” (again, Orwellian Newspeak for an adventure “forward” to some better place) BY THEIR PARENTS.

Parents can’t be bothered with what they consider “imperfect” babies.

Hell, in a world of designer babies, selective abortion, genetic matching before fertilization, and jackasses like Madonna going to Africa to buy a baby like a handbag, should we be surprised that a “parent” who learns their child is “imperfect” (”Damn, se doesn’t have blue eyes. Well, that’s too bad for her.”) babies that they would elect to allow their child to die a horrid death of starvation and dehyhdration?

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Note also that these babies are put on the “pathway” (again, Orwellian Newspeak for an adventure “forward” to some better place) BY THEIR PARENTS.

Parents can’t be bothered with what they consider “imperfect” babies.

Hell, in a world of designer babies, selective abortion, genetic matching before fertilization, and jackasses like Madonna going to Africa to buy a baby like a handbag, should we be surprised that a “parent” who learns their child is “imperfect” (”Damn, se doesn’t have blue eyes. Well, that’s too bad for her.”) babies that they would elect to allow their child to die a horrid death of starvation and dehydration?