Two Women shows that when
governments determine health
care priorities, some people suffer
truly unfortunate consequences.
Watch It Now!
Indoctrinate U, reveals the
ugly truths about academia that
you won't see in their glossy
admissions brochures.
Watch The Trailer!
In A Short Course in Brain
Surgery, filmmaker Stuart
Browning shows the callousness
of "single-payer", government
-run health care systems. Watch It Now!
Our short film El Uno De Mayo,
casts a light on the left-wing
totalitarian groups behind the
recent May Day marches. Watch It Now!
Think Canada's government-run
health care system is a model for
the U.S.? Think again!
Dead Meat is a searing cine-
matic examination of socialized
medicine. Watch It Now!
Young collectivist Ezra Klein, lover of all things government, ponderer of actuarial tables, self-styled health care expert, advocate of socialized medicine, emailed me last year concerning the news items that I post here at my website showing the disastrous and predictable results of government rationing of health care:
Ah, argument by anecdote, the last refuge of the scoundrel. [...] America has no shortage of terrible tales of maltreatment, deprivation, and wrongful death, but I'm not going to dip into that pond as I try to not enlist other's misfortunes as pawns in my argument. You, unfortunately, have no similar scruples.
"It is shameful that the U.S. is the only modern nation without a nationalized health care system."
"The U.S. lets 46 million people go without health insurance while other OECD countries provide free health care for all."
"Poor Americans are denied health care while the citizens of Europe get equal access to health care without regard to financial status."
For a quick reality-check, let's review how the socialized health care systems of Europe and Canada have been portrayed in their own media in the last few weeks:
While Ottawa and the provinces are struggling to reduce surgical wait times for hips and knees, some Canadians are waiting years to see a back specialist, according to a new survey released to CTV and The Globe and Mail.
People with often crippling back problems are being forced to live with debilitating pain while they wait, said Dr. Michael Ford, a spine surgeon.
According to the informal survey of back specialists by the Canadian Spine Society, many of his colleagues have over 1,000 patients waiting for a consultation, he said.
"These people have been on waiting lists for up to six years," he told CTV News.
BREAST screening waiting times for patients from the Omagh district have been described as "absolutely disgraceful" by local GP and SDLP West Tyrone Assembly candidate Dr Jo Deehan.
She revealed for cases deemed as non urgent patients may have to wait up to six months, and even for urgent cases there is still more than 25% of woman wait up to six weeks to be seen.
Women in Hertsmere are among the 3,500 affected by the suspension of routine breast screening at the North London Breast Screening Service (NLBSS).
NLBSS, which serves Hertsmere, Three Rivers, Watford and north London, wrote to patients just before Christmas, explaining that their appointments for mammograms have been postponed until services resume.
But Barnet and Chase Farm Hospitals NHS Trust, which manages the service, has still not given a date of when this will be, two months after the sevice was temporarily suspended.
A Scarborough mother is hoping her complaint to Rouge Valley Health System will ensure other surgical patients don't encounter the same communication mishap she endured this month.
Catherine Baillie filed a grievance with the hospital's patient relations consultant, Jana Bartley, after spending a frustrating day Feb. 14 waiting for exploratory surgery at the Centenary site in Scarborough.
She was scheduled for a laparoscopy to determine if she suffers from a painful condition known as endometriosis.
However, after eight hours of waiting, a cold and hungry Baillie learned the operation had been cancelled in the morning, but the news had not been conveyed to her.
If politicians were forced to use the government-run health care rationing systems that they administer, we would probably see the downfall of socialized medicine around the world. Stephen Robertson is Minister of Health for Queensland, the third most populous state of Australia where he oversees the taxpayer-supported, government-run, public health care system. Australia has long waiting lists for diagnostic tests, appointments with specialists, and surgery. Mercifully, Australia (unlike Canada) also has private hospitals as an alternative to the public queue. Last week, when Health Minister Robertson needed an operation, guess where he chose to have it done?
Queensland's Health Minister Stephen Robertson has had minor heart surgery.
He was admitted to St Andrews Private Hospital on Friday after feeling unwell and short of breath.
The Premier Peter Beattie says Mr Robertson had an angioplasty procedure and is now back at home.
It's too bad that many citizens of Australia - having paid high taxes to support government-run health care system - can't afford to make the same choice.
Two stories from this weekend's British press provide (for anyone who wishes to see) great insight into the priorities of a health care system run by politicians:
Nearly half of NHS hospitals are delaying operations to save money and the political skin of under-fire Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt.
Surgery is being postponed for at least 20 weeks in 43 per cent of hospitals until the start of the new financial year in a bid to balance the books.
But despite beds being available and doctors and nurses on call, campaigners said the delays were a "scandal" designed to save the career of the beleaguered minister rather than promoting the interests of patients.
Ms Hewitt pledged to she would resign if the NHS was not in the black at the end of the financial year in April.
Cancer patients are having to wait months beyond recommended dates for treatment to prevent the disease returning, say frustrated consultants.
After tumours are removed by surgery, patients should get follow-up radiotherapy within 28 days, according to Royal College of Radiologists guidelines.
But in many areas the wait is much longer.
In Kent, for instance, the waiting time for breast cancer patients is at least three months. Three patients have seen the disease return during the long gap between operation and radiotherapy.
Older patients waiting for orthopedic surgery like hip and knee replacements are often the quiet victims of socialized health care. Their waits to see specialists and subsequent waits for surgery are often interminable. Not only do they wait for years - but they wait in pain and misery. Often, their cases are more expensive and disabling because of the long wait. Here's a story from New Zealand that shows this very clearly:
Orthopaedic surgeons at Dunedin Hospital say they are being forced to ration treatment to the crippled, immobile and housebound.
In the latest Otago District Health Board orthopaedic newsletter to GPs, the surgeons said they had no alternative but to limit their attentions to the worst-affected due to lack of funding and increased demand,
"Currently, we are typically operating on patients who have two crutches, a frame or are in wheelchairs. They are virtually housebound and...will be on maximum medication which may include opiates.
"In addition, they are likely to have serious bone loss on their X-rays. Unless your patient falls into this group it is unlikely that we will be able to perform their surgery within six months," the letter read.
[...]
Patients with conditions including "ganglion, bunion surgery, ingrown toenails (and) lesser toe deformities" would not be operated on.
Spokesman for the surgeons, John Matheson, verified the statements made in the newsletter, obtained by The Otago Daily Times.
By the time people had enough points to qualify for surgery, their quality of life was awful, he said.
The advocates of government-run health care focus on insurance in the U.S. forgetting (or ignoring) that health insurance does not equal health care.
Having scheduled surgery cancelled at the last moment is a routine fact of life under socialized health care systems. Because hospitals are run on annual global budgets that constrict spending on operating rooms and IC units - and because the hours that a surgeon is allowed to operate per week are severly limited, there's not a lot of slack in the system. When emergency patients arrive, elective surgery patients have their procedures cancelled.
Unfortunately, 'elective surgery' doesn't mean 'optional'. The term describes nearly all cancer treatments. Cardiac bypass operations are 'elective'. So when urgently needed surgeries are cancelled at the last minute - often after a patient has waited months and sometime years for a date - it's a big deal.
It's nearly impossible to find news stories in the U.S. about cancelled surgeries. However, in Canada, the UK, New Zealand and other countries who have completely turned over their health care system to government, these stories are a daily occurance. Here are a few recent ones:
HOSPITAL patient Barbara Grimsley is furious after her latest operation was cancelled - as she waited to go into theatre.
The mum-of-five said she waited four hours at Coventry's University Hospital for a knee operation but she was sent home because of emergency admissions.
Mrs Grimsley, aged 50, of The Moorfield, Stoke Aldermoor, was looking forward to having the operation after two previous operation dates were cancelled.
But she was distraught when it was cancelled again after the operating theatre had to be used to treat emergency patients.
Mrs Grimsley, who is registered disabled said: "They had my knee all marked up and I was sat in my nightie waiting for four hours before we were told.
A SHEFFIELD hospital has postponed 10 operations today as it continues to deal with an influx of emergency patients.
It is the second day running that managers at the Northern General Hospital have needed to put off non-urgent operations. In total 36 operations have been postponed so far.
Repeated cancellations of heart operations owing to a chronic shortage of intensive-care unit (ICU) beds at Christchurch Hospital has raised concerns at the highest level.
David Hogberg at The National Center nails health care charlatan Matthew Holt:
Over at the inaptly named Health Care Blog ("Socialized Medicine Blog" would be more accurate), Matthew Holt gives a mini-seminar on the dangers of only reading a press release and not reading the actual study on which the press release is based.
[...]
Holt states: "There's been lots of BS about how the price reductions in those ads for LASIK 'prove' that cash based consumer payment works in health care." And what is that alleged bovine fecal matter regarding LASIK surgery? In a nutshell, it is inconsistent bundling of services, misleading advertising, and lack of information on quality.
However, if you dig into the study, which Holt clearly didn't, LASIK surgery performs very well on two crucial market factors: price and customer satisfaction. As market advocates have argued, when people pay for a service directly, providers compete on price, thereby driving prices down.
Women who have opted to have their ovaries and womb removed in an effort to prevent ovarian and breast cancer have been left waiting for a bed, according to a leading consultant oncologist.
Prof Peter Daly, consultant medical oncologist at St James's Hospital, Dublin said he has had "the unhappy situation" where a woman has had to come to terms with the prospect of surgery and make arrangements, only to be told that there is no bed for her when she arrives for surgery.
A WELSH businesswoman has chronicled the "inhumane" delays in treatment for breast cancer patients she witnessed at first hand.
In a blunt letter to a Welsh NHS Trust, she reveals how patients must first ring to see if a bed is available on their day of treatment, and are frequently left waiting for hours even when they are admitted.
Mother-of-three Angela Lloyd says her experiences show how a difficult situation is made even more traumatic by the lack of available beds.
In a letter sent to Hugh Ross, chief executive of the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust, Mrs Lloyd outlines the delays she and other patients waiting to undergo breast cancer surgery at Llandough Hospital, Cardiff, experienced.
Mrs Lloyd, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in October, described how she rang on the day she was due to be admitted for a mastectomy, but was told there were no available beds.
The idea behind "Universal Health Care" is that insurance equals health care. National health insurance provided by the government is, of course, the preferred solution.
In the U.K., where medicine is socialized, everyone is in theory "covered" by the National Health Service (NHS) - except, possibly, some people.
Patients could be denied treatment because they smoke or are overweight, Patricia Hewitt said yesterday.
The Health Secretary insisted it was right for those whose lifestyle choices could make treatment ineffective to be refused care in some circumstances.
It is the first time a minister has explicitly endorsed the controversial policy, which has already been adopted by some health trusts.
Opposition MPs and some medical experts predict the move could encourage rationing of treatment for vulnerable groups, particularly when many NHS trusts are struggling to balance their books.
Health trusts in Suffolk were among the first to announce that obese people would be denied hip and knee replacements on the NHS.
The ruling was part of an attempt to save money locally.
The incomparable Walter Williams cuts through the single-payer rhetoric about our system:
There's a cure for our health-care problems. That cure is not to demand more government but less government. I challenge anyone to identify a problem with health care in America that is not caused or aggravated by federal, state and local governments. And, I challenge anyone to show me people dying on the streets because they don't have health insurance.
Single-payer advocates consistently defend the Canadian system by claiming that waiting lists in Canada are almost exclusively people waiting for hip and knee replacements. That's patently untrue. Here's a form letter given to patients whose operations were cancelled by desperate and fedup doctors at Kelowna General Hospital in British Columbia, Canada. This was given to me by a vascular surgeon who operates there.
With this morning's New York Times business pages featuring single-payer propaganda from one Robert H. Frank replete with lies about national life expectancy averages somehow having anything to do with the quality of a health care system, it's good to see John Stossel over ar Real Clear Politics explaining in plain English that the problems in our health care system begin and end with government
... the problems have their roots in existing government activity. More such activity is unlikely to make things better.
The root of the problem is that few people face the true cost of medical care. Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries don't because taxpayers pay their bills. People with employer-based medical insurance don't because insurance policies shield them from it. Since they pay only small co-pays when they see a doctor, they don't ask, "Do I really need that test?" but rather, "Does my insurance cover it?"
People who don't face the full cost of their choices don't act like cost-conscious consumers. Higher prices result.
I do not agree with argument for health care federalism at the end of the article - but on the whole: all true.
A bricklayer told he will have to wait more than five months for a hernia operation at an Oxford hospital has been sent a survey asking him to rate his experiences booking his appointment.
Derek Risby, 53, is angry that staff at the John Radcliffe Hospital, Headington, have time to send out questionnaires, but cannot organise the surgery that will help him get back to work.
A WEST London councillor has been told he could wait six months for dental surgery after a bungled tooth extraction.
Councillor John Hensley (Con, Ickenham) is finding getting an appointment on the NHS like pulling teeth' and has slammed the bureaucratic processes for keeping him waiting.
Richard Ralston over at Americans for Free Choice in Medicine has written an excellent editorial on the dangers inherent in the Schwarzenegger health care proposal for California that contains the following paragraph - which I think sums up the attitudes of the advocates of government-run health care nicely:
Apparently, if people need health care, we must assume that is all that matters, and it must be seized and given to them with no regard for anything or anyone else. Give everyone all the health care they want, no matter what it costs or who must be forced to provide it. Take away everything else: individual rights, private property, privacy of medical records, personal choice. A need for health care must obliterate even the concept of freedom.
and this:
Drawing on an endless source of tax revenue and borrowing, government medical care does not bother about such things as cost control or fraud - and thus we have seen a geometric expansion in government medical spending for forty years. If the government is so much more efficient than corporations, why not eliminate all private commerce and have the government nationalize and run everything? Didn't somebody try that? Did it work?
Over on his wonky web site, health care bolshevik Matthew Holt publicly chastises a member of the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) by publishing an email exchange that this person probably thought was private. Go read it for insight into the kind of bullies who want to ration health care in the U.S.
Here's part of Mr. Holt's email to the NFIB member:
I understand that you represent your members and that their policies are what you follow. I would also humbly ask how many of your members know what share of GDP is spent on health care here versus Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Germany, France et al...you know the answer. Those countries spend virtually 50% the amount we do on health care.
In Mr. Holt's collectivist universe, how much "we" spend on health care is an overriding concern, regardless of the wishes and intentions of the individual. Certainly, there's a lot of waste in U.S. health care due to overreliance on health insurance and government intervention into the marketplace, however, there are also good reasons that the U.S. spends more. We're a wealthy country and health care is a premium good. As income rises, health care spending rises. When we're sick, we want a definitive diagnosis. We don't mind spending more money on diagnostic tests and specialists in order to rule out minor possibilities. There are good ways to reduce health care spending and weed out waste. Outlawing private health insurance and having government ration health care by physical force - as Mr. Holt and others advocate - is not one of them.
Waiting in Pain
Here's a perfect example of how other countries manage to spend "virtually 50% the amount we do" it. They deny care by imposing global health care budgets: From today's Northern Echo newspaper in the UK: You'll have to go home - we've run out of cash
A PATIENT in so much pain he was given morphine was told by doctors that his operation had been cancelled because the hospital had run out of money.
Matthew Fowler-Jones was told he must leave his hospital bed and go home, despite being told by a consultant the operation "needed doing".
The 26-year-old, who was on a no-solids diet for three days in readiness for the surgery, was given a supply of powerful painkillers and discharged.
He was told his routine gallstone operation had been cancelled because there was no money left in the NHS kitty this financial year to pay for it.
Mr Fowler-Jones, of Helmsley, North Yorkshire, was twice admitted and discharged from the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, after suffering agonising abdominal pains over the past fortnight.
After the operation was initially cancelled, he was again admitted to the hospital in agony days later.
He was again discharged, once his condition was stabalised.
The defenders of government-run medicine are critical of the "argument by anecdote" implicit in the reporting of the constant stream of bad news stories in the English language press concerning waiting and suffering by patients under their beloved socialized medical systems. They prefer to compare health care systems using measures such as surveys of "healthiness", life expectancy averages, infant mortality rates, public opinion polls (of mostly healthy people) and so on. And then, there's their predictable moral outrage about how much we are spending on health care as they outline their plans to ration your health care.
However, observe that its nearly impossible to find comparable stories of health care rationing in the US health care system. For all our problems - and there are many - artificially created shortages and rationing is NOT one of them. Below are just a small sampling of recent news stories from Canada and the U.K. I could list many more from countries like Australia and New Zealand.
Overcrowding in the emergency ward at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster has become so bad that patients are being forced to sleep in closets, says a senior surgeon.
"There are patients that are literally in closets. They're in the nurses' lounge, where the nurses go to have coffee, there are patients in there," said Dr Bertrand Perey, the hospital's deputy chief of surgery.
A number of morbidly obese people in Saskatchewan say they are getting sick waiting for weight-loss surgery.
Right now, there are about 330 people on the waiting list and no new patients being accepted in Saskatoon, the main centre for bariatric surgery in the province.
A piano remover fears his livelihood is under threat after waiting nearly two weeks for an operation to treat a broken arm.
Mark Bliss, of Kingston Road, North Oxford, fractured his right arm on Sunday, January 21, but is still waiting for surgery at the John Radcliffe Hospital.
The Lakin Road directors were forced to open three extra wards and use surgical beds, which led to some appointments being cancelled at the last minute.
At the start of the year, staff also saw the number of extra beds being used jump from zero to 50 in a week - making staffing difficult. Last year the hospital began reducing the number of beds which it had in wards.
The idea that one has a right to all medically necessary health care - without having any obligation to earn it - was implanted in the American psyche with the establishment of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), passed in 1986, extended this logic by forcing hospitals to provide free emergency medical care to anyone who comes within 100 yards of an ER - regardless of ability or willingness to pay.
However, unlike true political rights such as the right to free speech or private property, the so-called "right to health care" has an unfortunate corollary: doctors are slaves without political rights of their own.
Many hospitals - forced by government to provide charity care - compel doctors to signup for unpaid ER duty or lose staff privileges. Doctors who respond in the middle of the night to the ER call, often end up providing free care to patients who are unable or unwilling to pay - and - they are vulnerable to malpractice lawsuits. Now, doctors at one Florida hospital are rebelling:
Thirteen of Palms West Hospital's 16 gastroenterologists quit the medical staff Thursday in a dispute over having to treat emergency patients.
The disagreement started after the Loxahatchee hospital in December required all of the specialists to see emergency patients. Most of the doctors refused unless they were paid to be on call.
[...]
Palm Beach County's medical specialists have increasingly avoided treating emergency patients out of a fear of being sued and not getting paid by an uninsured patient. The perceived threat of a lawsuit has become a bigger fear as most specialists in the county have opted to not buy malpractice insurance because of its high costs.
Gastroenterologists, who typically spend most of their time performing colonoscopies to detect colon cancer, handle internal bleeding and gallbladder attacks among their emergency duties.
But many have stopped or reduced working in the ER because today they do nearly all their non-emergency cases in their own outpatient surgery centers. As a result, the specialists no longer need hospitals for their livelihood.
Here's just a sampling of stories from the English language press in the last week that tell the same stories over and again: bed shortages, cancelled operations, restricted OR hours, long waits for diagnostic tests and appointments with specialists.
A frustrated Ulsterman today begged health chiefs to save the life of his desperately ill mother - two months after she flew back home from Australia to get urgent cancer treatment.
A statement from 'Rosie' has underlined that a seven month waiting list for an investigative procedure is the cause of her terminal bowel cancer. She reiterated that, contrary to recent reports - there was no failure on behalf of her GP to refer her for a colonoscopy. She says "I have terminal cancer because I was put on a waiting list. I don't blame any individual at any of the hospitals where I was treated. It is Government policy to put me on a list and the failure to save my life lies solely with the Minister for Health, Mary Harney and the Government.
Nearly 7,000 patients across Northern Ireland are waiting for scans to find out if they have potentially life-threatening conditions such as cancer, the Belfast Telegraph can reveal today.
It is understood some patients are waiting months for a scan.
TONY Blair came under fire this week over delays in operations at Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital aimed to help Norfolk Primary Care Trust tackle its £50 million debt.
The PCT told the hospital to defer all routine operations from December 1 until after the new financial year, meaning patients will have to wait for up to the maximum 20 weeks.
When high-school teacher Bob McDonnell faced a staggering 21/2-year wait for hip-replacement surgery in Ontario, he went to the popular medical tourist destination of Chennai, India, where he received first-rate care at a Third World price.
Sault MP Tony Martin said today hiring more doctors, nurses and nurse practioners will reduce wait times for children surgeries more effectively than a new government plan that will take years to create a wait-times database.
Christine Lord, who has been in remission for 18 months, says 300 fewer appointments were available last year when the number of visits by Sydney oncologists were reduced from once weekly to twice monthly.
She says waiting lists now stretch back to November 2005.
Canadian doctors, on the whole, are not a risk-taking bunch. Vengeful hospital administrators can cut a surgeon's allotted operating room hours even further - resulting in even longer waiting lists for that doctor's patients. However, some are speaking out:
A doctor has gone public with his concerns about the state of Sudbury Regional Hospital.
Dr. Miguel Bonin says he refuses to let his patients suffer because of these problems. He is speaking out about the hospital's old equipment, overcrowded facilities and behind-schedule capital construction project.
[...]
"I'm not afraid of anyone. The biggest price I've paid for doing what I've done is I'm being stopped in the halls to tell me to keep going and do these things, and I've so little time to start with that I don't have time to keep going."
[...]
The hospital's operating rooms are equipped with out-of-date and even dangerous equipment, he says. When he was operating in a room at the Memorial site last week, the operating table wouldn't always go up and down because the electronic components weren't working.
However, some can't take socialized medicine anymore and leave for the free market of cosmetic surgery:
Some doctors are scaling back their family practices to perform cosmetic procedures, spurring critics to ask whether the move will make current health-care waiting lists even longer.
'One of my colleagues was a family doctor but now she's doing hair transplants because ... she was getting fed up' with the health-care system.
[...]
Firm numbers are not available but hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Canadian family doctors and specialists are replacing or supplementing their medical practice with cosmetic procedures.
Young collectivist Ezra Klein, lover of all things government, ponderer of actuarial tables, self-styled health care expert, advocate of socialized medicine, emailed me last year concerning the news items that I post here at my website showing the disastrous and predictable results of government rationing of health care:
