posted August 25, 2009 10:34 PM         

We're sorry the patient is unhappy with the service they received.

Man collapses with ruptured appendix... three weeks after NHS doctors 'took it out'
By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 12:15 AM on 26th August 2009

After weeks of excruciating pain, Mark Wattson was understandably relieved to have his appendix taken out.
Doctors told him the operation was a success and he was sent home.
But only a month later the 35-year-old collapsed in agony and had to be taken back to Great Western Hospital in Swindon by ambulance.

To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured - a potentially fatal complication.
In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Mr Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.

The blunder has left Mr Wattson jobless, as bosses at the shop where he worked did not believe his story and sacked him.
Mr Wattson told of the moment he realised there had been a serious mistake.
'I was lying on a stretcher in terrible pain and a doctor came up to me and said that my appendix had burst,' he said.

'I couldn't believe what I was hearing. I told these people I had my appendix out just four weeks earlier but there it was on the scanner screen for all to see.
'I thought, "What the hell did they slice me open for in the first place?"
'I feel that if the surgery had been done correctly in the first place I wouldn't be in the mess I am today. I'm disgusted by the whole experience.'

Mr Wattson first went under the knife on July 7 after experiencing severe abdominal pain for several weeks. He was discharged but exactly a month later he had to dial 999 after collapsing in agony.
Mr Wattson was readmitted to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon after his appendix ruptured

posted August 26, 2009 04:28 AM         

25 years ago i had a deadly date with pneumonia. in new york state twenty miles from the big apple, surrounded by experts intent on finding WHY i was so sick, i was subjected to xrays and blood tests and spinal taps and nothing but nothing could show them the light. i healed myself by my will to live in the middle of the night and nest morning they were scratching their heads over how i was recovering so fast. in fact so fast that i was able to tell them to sod off with their proposed new round of tests!

one month later back in england for a follow-up exam with my (socialist NHS doctor) she asked me the profound question: are you pregnant? d'oh...the reason i was so sick was because nursing and pregnant i contracted the flu, which put me in a tailspin, i can tell you! not one of those free MEN had a clue, took a socialist GP to find out the truth....

after all we had been thru, a week of raging fever, antibiotic drips, xrays, the lot, the fetus was a mess and so was i. that pregnancy was terminated and i never regretted it.

what i regretted was that on a visit to my hometown, covered by A MILLION DOLLAR insurance policy, i was made to lie in a hallway waiting while my mom's doctor and my husband negotiated with the hospital who didn't want to admit me unless we coughed up cash first. then i was tortured with investigations that were completely unnecessary and about the ONLY part of that treatment that helped me were a) the eurythromycin and b) the forced weaning of my daughter. of course we had to be separated during that time but that is another story...

my point? this goes on everywhere. you can find horror stories anywhere if you look selectively. that is what newspapers (for daily mail swap a slightly uppercut tabloid of your choice) DO. only the very best of them have ANY detachment and even they need be read with DISCRETION and DISCRIMINATION. your virgo mercury SHOULD be able to handle that.

if you look for division you will find it my friend. in this way you add to the chaos.

posted August 26, 2009 08:30 AM         

In this instance, the greedy, money grubbing hospital attempted to not treat you...admit you, when you had a "MILLION DOLLAR HEALTH INSURANCE POLICY" they could milk and mine for all it's worth. Wow, they would have had agents in the streets looking for people just like you...if your...and O'Bomber's assumptions about greedy doctors, greedy hospitals and others motivated by greed alone in the health care sector were actually true.

Your second story problem is that the Federalies...the Feds have now and have had a law on the books forbidding medical providers from refusing to treat anyone..whether they can pay or not.

Yet, here you are once again attempting to defend the indefensible in support of Socialism and Socialists. That's the exact spot where we can always find you katatonic...in defense of Socialism.

I notice not once did you say the story was a lie and it didn't happen.

Apparently you, O'Bomber and other practitioners of Socialism have a very low expectation of acceptable practices for Socialist health care. That's good katatonic because low levels of health care is what Socialist health care actually delivers to patients.

That's not acceptable in America katatonic. We have high expectations for our medical care, medical care for our families, our neighbors and even for those who cannot pay.

Socialist health care systems around the world have already proved they don't measure up to our high standards.

If these cases had happened in America there would be universal outrage and lawsuits which would bankrupt the offending health care institutions.

But, these kinds of outrages are not going to happen in America katatonic because O'Bomber's campaign to bring Socialist health care to America has hit the brick wall of citizen outrage over the provisions in the Socialist health care bill(s).

The babies born in hospital corridors: Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices and hospital toilets
By Jenny Hope and Nick Mcdermott
Last updated at 8:36 AM on 26th August 2009

Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.
The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets - even a caravan - went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.

Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.

Latest figures show that over the past two years there were at least:

63 births in ambulances and 608 in transit to hospitals;

117 births in A&E departments, four in minor injury units and two in medical assessment areas;

115 births on other hospital wards and 36 in other unspecified areas including corridors;

399 in parts of maternity units other than labour beds, including postnatal and antenatal wards and reception areas.
Additionally, overstretched maternity units shut their doors to any more women in labour on 553 occasions last year.

Babies were born in offices, lifts, toilets and a caravan, according to the Freedom of Information data for 2007 and 2008 from 117 out of 147 trusts which provide maternity services.

One woman gave birth in a lift while being transferred to a labour ward from A&E while another gave birth in a corridor, said East Cheshire NHS Trust.

Others said women had to give birth on the wards - rather than in their own maternity room - because the delivery suites were full.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997. At the same time birth rates have been rising sharply - up 20 per cent in some areas.

Mr Lansley said: 'New mothers should not be being put through the trauma of having to give birth in such inappropriate places.

More...Woman gives birth on pavement 'after being refused ambulance and told to walk'

Father turned away from hospital with pregnant wife delivers baby on bathroom floor - and saves his daughter's life

'While some will be unavoidable emergencies, it is extremely distressing for them and their families to be denied a labour bed because their maternity unit is full.

'It shows the incredible waste that has taken place that mothers are getting this sort of sub-standard treatment despite Gordon Brown's tripling of spending on the NHS.

'Labour have let down mothers by cutting the number of maternity beds and by shutting down maternity units.'

The NHS employs the equivalent of around 25,000 full-time midwives in England, but the Government has promised to recruit 3,400 more.

However, the Royal College of Midwives estimates at least 5,000 more are needed to provide the quality of service pledged in the Government's blueprint for maternity services, Maternity Matters.
At the same time almost half of all midwives are set to retire in the next decade.

Jon Skewes, a director at the Royal College of Midwives, said: 'The rise in the number of births in other than a designated labour bed is a concern. We would want to see the detail behind these figures to look at why this is happening.

'There is no doubt that maternity services are stretched, and that midwives are working harder and harder to provide good quality care. However, we know the Government is putting more money into the service.

'The key now is to make sure this money is spent by the people controlling the purse strings at a local level.'
Care services minister Phil Hope said: 'The number of maternity beds in the NHS reflects the number of women wanting to give birth in hospital. Giving birth can be unpredictable and it is difficult to plan for the exact time and place of every birth.

'Local health services have plans to ensure high quality, personal care with greater choice over place of birth and care provided by a named midwife.

'We recognise that some parts of the country face particular challenges due to the rising birth rate and that is why last year we pledged to increase funding for maternity by £330million over three years.
'We now have more maternity staff than ever before and we have already met our target to recruit 1,000 extra midwives by September.'

Case study: I gave birth in a car
Pregnant Linda Corbett, 33, was turned away from one hospital and gave birth in a car as she dashed to another.
Her husband Chris, 39, delivered their daughter Iona in the back seat while her father raced to the hospital at 70mph.
'I was really scared but I had to hold it together as I was the only one who knew the way to the hospital,' she said.

'The baby was born just as we entered the car park.' Mrs Corbett, pictured, was due to give birth at her Brighton home in June last year but when she phoned the Royal Sussex County Hospital after her contractions started she was told the maternity unit was too busy to send a midwife to her.

When she phoned back later, she was told the unit was full and she would have to go to another hospital. Fifteen minutes later she gave birth.

She said: 'We had such a happy ending but it could have been a disaster.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1209034/The-babies-born-hospital-corridors-Bed-shortage-forces-4-000-mothers-birth-lifts-offices-hospital-toilets.html

posted August 26, 2009 01:06 PM         

in fact you have even sensationalized what i said! i did not say they were evil and moneygrubbing, just that their bureaucracy was more important than admitting me when i was in dire need. and that i too was "in the hallway" despite being obviously quite contagious to other sick people there.

yes the nhs is in trouble. as is our own system or there wouldn't be so many people wanting to change it, would there?

do you know how many mothers would prefer to have their babies at home? you seem to think hospitals are the be all and end all in healthcare. many people have already turned their backs on the pharmaceutical/surgical approach to medicine. and many more will in the near future...but what would i know about that? i'm only in preventive health care!

posted August 26, 2009 04:47 PM         

We don't need to destroy the best health care system on earth to address problems of portability, problems for those with pre-existing health problems...or those who are uninsured...nor do we need to have taxpayers pay for insuring illegal aliens, provide taxpayer funded abortions or any of the other nonsense Socialist demoscats think are essential.

What they really want is control over the entire health care sector...and thereby control over everyone in America.

posted August 26, 2009 10:12 PM         

HoustonTeaParty (1 month ago)

2.3 trillion is pennies compared to the amount that is being wasted now!

I am no troofer. Just someone who reads a bit.
Wake up a crisis is always used as an excuse to seize power. One side does it, then the other, the only thing that doesn't change is the federal government keeps growing.

posted August 27, 2009 08:08 AM         

We could immediately lower that 47 million number of so called uninsured Americans by advising those who are uninsured but whom are eligible for government subsidies to sign themselves and their kids up for existing programs...those who, so far have not done so.

We could immediately lower that 47 million number of so called uninsured Americans by establishing high risk private insurance pools of insurance companies with the government picking up only the ADDITIONAL COST of insuring those with pre-existing conditions.

We could immediately lower the overall cost of health care by screening out junk law suits filed by unscrupulous ambulance chasers like John Edwards...the family man and the rest of the tort attorneys. These junk lawsuits force medical providers to practice a very expensive form of medical care...known as defensive medicine.

We could immediately lower the overall cost of health insurance by permitting citizens to purchase health insurance across state lines...or even across national borders. Right now, some large insurers have a virtual monopoly in some states due to Congress violating the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution. You can purchase most anything across state lines...but not health insurance.

If these simple fixes to health care and health insurance were implemented those 47 million so called uninsured Americans would disappear and health care costs and health insurance costs would go down.

But, all these fixes to the best health care delivery system on earth have been proposed already....and fought by Socialists who really don't give a damn about people at all. They want total control..to regulate, to tax, to direct who lives and who dies according to a death panel which proposes to hand out death sentences for senior citizens...death sentences for the disabled and death sentences for those who disagree with their Socialist policies. That's O'BomberCare and all the little Socialist geeks, dorks, jerks and useful idiots of Socialism cheer.

posted August 27, 2009 08:16 AM         

Health Systems: Health care in France is often held up as a model the U.S. might follow. Yet the French have their own problems that show there's no such thing as a free lunch — or a free doctor's visit.

Call it the grass-is-greener syndrome. Advocates of national health care, acknowledging the flaws in ObamaCare yet despising the current U.S. system that has the best medicines, the best medical equipment and the shortest waiting lists, have turned their eyes lovingly to places like France.

As City Journal contributing editor Guy Sorman notes, the French would also love to have the low-cost, high-service system some Americans gush about. Unfortunately, they don't. France's system isn't that cheap and is financed by high taxes on labor that have heavy economic consequences.

Sorman notes that a Frenchman making a monthly salary of 3,000 euros has 350 of them deducted for health insurance. Then the employer throws in an additional 1,200 euros. This raises the cost of labor to prohibitive levels and puts a brake on economic growth. This helps explain why French unemployment hovers around 10%.

France imposes an additional tax levy to cover the constant deficits that national health insurance runs.

The French Parliament raises this levy, which applies to all forms of income, every year. Altogether, Sorman writes, "25% of French national income goes toward what's called Social Security, which includes health care and basic retirement pensions for all."

Drugs developed in America at enormous expense do cost less in France, which decides what drugs are to be used and at what prices. American patients in effect subsidize the French, who take the same pills at half the price because American pharmaceutical companies don't want to lose the French market.

French taxpayers fund a state health insurer, Assurance Maladie. Assurance Maladie has run in the red since 1989, and this year's shortfall is expected to be 9.4 billion euros ($13.5 billion) and 15 billion euros in 2010, about 10% of its budget.

Regardless of the cost, does the French system produce better outcomes? Not always. Infant mortality rates are often cited as a reason socialized medicine and single-payer systems are better than what we have here. But according to Dr. Linda Halderman, a policy adviser in the California State Senate, these comparisons are bogus.

Official World Health Organization statistics show the U.S. lagging behind France in infant mortality rates — 6.7 per 1,000 live births vs. 3.8 for France. Halderman notes that in the U.S., any infant born that shows any sign of life for any length of time is considered a live birth. In France — in fact, in most of the European Union — any baby born before 26 weeks' gestation is not considered alive and therefore doesn't "count" in reported infant mortality rates.

France reimburses its doctors at a far lower rate than U.S. physicians would accept.

As David Gratzer, a physician and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in the summer 2007 issue of City Journal: "In France, the supply of doctors is so limited that during an August 2003 heat wave — when many doctors were on vacation and hospitals were stretched beyond capacity — 15,000 elderly citizens died."

After the tragedy, the French parliament released a harshly worded report blaming the deaths on a complex health system, widespread failure among agencies and health services to coordinate efforts, and chronically insufficient care for the elderly.

It's hard to imagine that happening here, where hospitals have enough air-conditioned beds and doctors that aren't on vacation.

Fact is, most Americans like their health care. There are ways to provide expanded coverage at lower cost, such as pushing individually owned health savings accounts, malpractice reform and allowing insurance to be bought across state lines.

posted August 27, 2009 02:04 PM         

i notice one of your suggestions is signing people up for programs they are already eligible for, ie government programs. why are they all right and new ones not?

as i said, you are paying heavily for the people who have the right to get treated in the emergency room. if they were insured at a rate they could afford, and their insurance companies were not allowed to refuse them for ridiculous reasons, you would be paying less.

also if government funded healthcare programs were cleaned up and fraud better monitored and eliminated it would cost everybody less too.

posted August 27, 2009 06:56 PM         

I found out recently that Blue Cross initially was not -for-profit.
Quite a few were. When profits start to go through every roof those organizations got in the game...a very profitable game.

posted August 27, 2009 07:08 PM         

quote:

---

i repeat, do you partake of medicare?

---

posted August 31, 2009 10:06 AM         

The Marxist Socialist O'Bomber and his Socialist demoscats in Congress are losing middle America...and unaffiliated voters.

"Those opposed to Mr. Obama’s reform appear to have momentum on their side. Polling last weekend showed that 48% of voters rate the U.S. health-care system as good or excellent. That’s up from 35% in May and up from 29% a year ago. Only 19% now rate the system as poor, down from 37% a year ago. It appears that the prospect of changing health care has made the existing system look better to a lot of people.

Beyond the intensity of the opposition and its momentum, there is also a huge partisan gap that puts congressional Democrats in a very difficult position. Currently, 76% of Democratic voters favor the health-care reform plan proposed by Mr. Obama and the congressional Democrats, and they are counting on their representatives to deliver.

But delivering for the Democratic base has the potential to hurt the party’s standing among independents. Among the unaffiliated, 35% are in favor of the Democrats’ health-care reform initiative, and 60% are opposed. Notably, just 16% of unaffiliated voters strongly favor the legislative effort; 47% strongly oppose it."
www.rasmussenreports.com

It's the swing voters...the unaffiliated and Independents who decide elections in America.

posted September 02, 2009 07:30 PM         

Oh wait, you permitted the little puke Socialists to take your guns away from you long ago.

I guess that leaves only one option for you British. Die on the Socialist's schedule.

Sentenced to death on the NHS
Patients with terminal illnesses are being made to die prematurely under an NHS scheme to help end their lives, leading doctors warn today.
By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent
Published: 10:00PM BST 02 Sep 2009

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, a group of experts who care for the terminally ill claim that some patients are being wrongly judged as close to death.

Under NHS guidance introduced across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

But this approach can also mask the signs that their condition is improving, the experts warn.

As a result the scheme is causing a “national crisis” in patient care, the letter states. It has been signed palliative care experts including Professor Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, University of London, Dr Peter Hargreaves, a consultant in Palliative Medicine at St Luke’s cancer centre in Guildford, and four others.

“Forecasting death is an inexact science,”they say. Patients are being diagnosed as being close to death “without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

“As a result a national wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients."

The warning comes just a week after a report by the Patients Association estimated that up to one million patients had received poor or cruel care on the NHS.

The scheme, called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP),***Read..Death Panel*** was designed to reduce patient suffering in their final hours.

Developed by Marie Curie, the cancer charity, in a Liverpool hospice it was initially developed for cancer patients but now includes other life threatening conditions.

It was recommended as a model by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice), the Government’s health scrutiny body, in 2004.

It has been gradually adopted nationwide and more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England currently use the system.

Under the guidelines the decision to diagnose that a patient is close to death is made by the entire medical team treating them, including a senior doctor.

They look for signs that a patient is approaching their final hours, which can include if patients have lost consciousness or whether they are having difficulty swallowing medication.

However, doctors warn that these signs can point to other medical problems.

Patients can become semi-conscious and confused as a side effect of pain-killing drugs such as morphine if they are also dehydrated, for instance.

When a decision has been made to place a patient on the pathway doctors are then recommended to consider removing medication or invasive procedures, such as intravenous drips, which are no longer of benefit.

If a patient is judged to still be able to eat or drink food and water will still be offered to them, as this is considered nursing care rather than medical intervention.

Dr Hargreaves said that this depended, however, on constant assessment of a patient’s condition.

He added that some patients were being “wrongly” put on the pathway, which created a “self-fulfilling prophecy” that they would die.

He said: “I have been practising palliative medicine for more than 20 years and I am getting more concerned about this “death pathway” that is coming in.

“It is supposed to let people die with dignity but it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Patients who are allowed to become dehydrated and then become confused can be wrongly put on this pathway.”

He added: “What they are trying to do is stop people being overtreated as they are dying.

“It is a very laudable idea. But the concern is that it is tick box medicine that stops people thinking.”

He said that he had personally taken patients off the pathway who went on to live for “significant” amounts of time and warned that many doctors were not checking the progress of patients enough to notice improvement in their condition.

Prof Millard said that it was “worrying” that patients were being “terminally” sedated, using syringe drivers, which continually empty their contents into a patient over the course of 24 hours.

In 2007-08 16.5 per cent of deaths in Britain came about after continuous deep sedation, according to researchers at the Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, twice as many as in Belgium and the Netherlands.

“If they are sedated it is much harder to see that a patient is getting better,” Prof Millard said.

Katherine Murphy, director of the Patients Association, said: “Even the tiniest things that happen towards the end of a patient’s life can have a huge and lasting affect on patients and their families feelings about their care.

“Guidelines like the LCP can be very helpful but healthcare professionals always need to keep in mind the individual needs of patients.

“There is no one size fits all approach.”

A spokesman for Marie Curie said: “The letter highlights some complex issues related to care of the dying.

“The Liverpool Care Pathway for the Dying Patient was developed in response to a societal need to transfer best practice of care of the dying from the hospice to other care settings.

“The LCP is not the answer to all the complex elements of this area of health care but we believe it is a step in the right direction.”

The pathway also includes advice on the spiritual care of the patient and their family both before and after the death.

It has also been used in 800 instances outside care homes, hospices and hospitals, including for people who have died in their own homes.

The letter has also been signed by Dr Anthony Cole, the chairman of the Medical Ethics Alliance, Dr David Hill, an anaesthetist, Dowager Lady Salisbury, chairman of the Choose Life campaign and Dr Elizabeth Negus a lecturer in English at Barking University.

A spokesman for the Department of Health said: “People coming to the end of their lives should have a right to high quality, compassionate and dignified care.

"The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP) is an established and recommended tool that provides clinicians with an evidence-based framework to help delivery of high quality care for people at the end of their lives.

posted September 03, 2009 10:31 AM         

I understand your problem...except that the paper about which you're whining quoted doctors within the British Socialist National Health Service.

Now katatonic, you could say the paper made it all up out of thin air and is therefore lying.

You want to allege the paper made it all up and is lying through their collective teeth about these "medical murders"?

posted September 03, 2009 04:42 PM         

it sounds to me as if you have never had any personal experience with the press. if you had you would know that even the best-intentioned reporter will edit what he is told so it fits his story.

i am not talking about some notion that is being circulated by biassed politicians, but about what "misquote" and "out of context" actually mean. i have personally been quoted more than a few times and AT LEAST HALF the time, seen verbatim "quotes" used to say exactly the opposite of what would have been OBVIOUS TO ANYONE WHO WAS ALLOWED ACCESS TO THE WHOLE quote or conversation.

the british press, like the american press, are past masters at this. and like i said, it is part and parcel of the PROCESS of reporting. the reporter has a story, or a point of view, which he uses quotes to back up. is he going to include the parts that deflate his story or argument? no.

i just read a book which i willingly and honestly contributed to. the author was painstaking in quoting, not paraphrasing people, and had nothing but the best kind of intentions.

but an author has to decide what is useful and what is irrelevant, unless they are going to write reams of directionless quotes....so

posted September 03, 2009 04:51 PM         

are you not aware that people own guns in the uk? are you also not aware that the average beat cop does NOT carry guns like our lovely boys in blue?

there is a difference between placing sane regulations on who can own a gun, expecting them to know rudimentary rules of upkeep and SAFEkeeping, and taking them away! but since the riot police and special units don't come calling often, the people don't NEED guns to defend themselves! what a novel idea!

oops! sorry, it appears the law has gotten stricter since i left. however in accusing the "socialists" you should know that gun control started with the OPPOSITE side...and that a HUGE percentage of britons really don't give a rat's arse what the government thinks about their private lives. speaking of rats, my father-in-law's favourite outdoor hobby is ... SHOOTING RATS. he lives in england, just for the record.

"The 1920 Firearms Act was the first serious British restriction on guns. Although crime was low in England in 1920, the government feared massive labor disruption and a Bolshevik revolution"

posted September 04, 2009 02:30 PM         

the funny thing was that this article talked about the DAILY MIRROR's article on the same subject, in response to remarks from the US that gun control was counterproductive as only criminals would dare have guns anymore.

the mirror reacted with outrage and indignation at the implication that the "wild west mentality" in america would dare to criticize the wonderful british on this account...

it ALSO agreed that violent crime has certainly risen with the increasing control of private gun ownership.

IN OTHER WORDS the daily mirror, like several of it counterparts, writes out of both sides of its mouth at the same time, so as to satisfy the most customers and make it as easy as possible for both sides to quote the same paper to back up their own side!! this is reporting at its best, eh jwhop? and the kind of paper you refer to in your articles about the brits...

"Have a Nice Daydream," The Mirror, a London daily, shot back, reporting: "Britain reacted with fury and disbelief last night to claims by American newsmen that crime and violence are worse here than in the US." But sandwiched between the article's battery of official denials -- "totally misleading," "a huge over-simplification," "astounding and outrageous" -- and a compilation of lurid crimes from "the wild west culture on the other side of the Atlantic where every other car is carrying a gun," The Mirror conceded that the CBS anchorman was correct. Except for murder and rape, it admitted, "Britain has overtaken the US for all major crimes." http://www.reason.com/news/show/28582.html

posted October 18, 2009 08:36 PM         

Of course, by now everyone realizes O'BomberCare is good enough for ordinary American citizens BUT it's not good enough for members of Congress who have the Cadillac of health insurance plans and refuse to be covered by O'BomberCare. We know this because amendments have been offered to the various bills which comprise O'BomberCare which would have forced our public servants to accept the same insurance policy they propose for us...and they refused to do so.

October 18, 2009
UK universal health care bypassed by its own workers
Thomas Lifson

Stunning! Britain's National Health Service care standards may be good enough for ordinary folks, but the people who work there know better. They are getting taxpayer money to pay for their own private care. The UK Times reports:

THE National Health Service has spent £1.5m paying for hundreds of its staff to have private health treatment so they can leapfrog their own waiting lists.

More than 3,000 staff, including doctors and nurses, have gone private at the taxpayers' expense in the past three years because the queues at the clinics and hospitals where they work are too long.

Figures released under the Freedom of Information act show that NHS administrative staff, paramedics and ambulance drivers have also been given free private healthcare. This has covered physiotherapy, osteopathy, psychiatric care and counselling - all widely available on the NHS. [....]

The health department defended the practice and said sending doctors, nurses and other key staff for private treatment helped to get them back to work.

In order to serve the people better, the "public servants" must be treated better than the ordinary people. This exact logic was used in the old Soviet Union to justify very different treatment for the elite, who naturally could not bear the poverty they forced on the rest of the populace.

It is time that Americans learn and use the concept of nomenklatura, the communist version of a ruling class. In the Soviet Union, party members and high officials had special stores, vacation facilities, health care, cars, and much more. Money didn't define the rulers; political status did. No matter how much money a consumer had, there were still lines and shortages at the stores selling meat, toilet paper, and many other things which were deemed "luxuries." For the nomenklatura, special outlets closed to the public were abundantly stocked, and prices were affordable.

Do you suppose that Obama and Congress ever plan on being dependent on ObamaCare? They have exempted themselves.