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POPSStem cell treatment restores sight to partially blind man In an experimental treatment devised by doctors at the North East England Stem Cell Institute in Newcastle, stem cells were taken from Turnbull's healthy eye and grown on a layer of amniotic tissue, which is routinely used as a burn dressing. The NHS banks amniotic sacs donated by women who have had a Caesarean section.
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POPSWealth on Health The report by healthcare analysts Dr Foster found that 12 trusts are putting patients at serious risk because of life-threatening errors and 'systemic' safety failings - even though eight of them were praised as 'good' or 'excellent' by the Care Quality Commission health watchdog only last month. It also found that 27 trusts - a fifth of the total - have unusually high death rates - equating to almost 5,000 excess deaths. More than half of the 27 are supposedly elite foundation trusts. The joint-tenth-worst, Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre, is said by Dr Foster to have a death rate 15 per cent higher than the national average. Yet its chief executive, Julian Hartley, saw his pay rise by 32 per cent from £125,000 to £165,000 when his trust attained foundation status in December 2007. He has now left to join South Manchester, another of the least-safe trusts on the list.
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POPSShocking death toll at Basildon and Thurrock University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust after repeated requests to address the problems had failed to deliver results. It has referred the trust to Monitor, the foundation trust regulator, for action. It is the second time in six months that a foundation trust, a flagship NHS medical institution granted control of its own finances on the strength of its performance, has been found to be delivering sub-standard care suspected of causing hundreds of deaths.
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POPSYour Obamacare Future - lots of government CYA, and dead people The trust, which has a budget of £250 million and more than 700 beds at its main hospital in Basildon, has repeatedly pledged to improve but failed to do so, the CQC's report said. “This Government has set up a labyrinth of bodies and inspectors which are meant to ensure high quality standards in our hospitals but it simply isn’t working. This is yet another case where a hospital has passed the test on paper but where real patient safety has clearly been compromised.”
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POPSSick Around the World One secret to Japan's success? By law, everyone must buy health insurance -- either through an employer or a community plan -- and, unlike in the U.S., insurers cannot turn down a patient for a pre-existing illness, nor are they allowed to make a profit. Reid's journey then takes him to Germany, the country that invented the concept of a national health care system. For its 80 million people, Germany offers universal health care, including medical, dental, mental health, homeopathy and spa treatment. Professor Karl Lauterbach, a member of the German parliament, describes it as "a system where the rich pay for the poor and where the ill are covered by the healthy." As they do in Japan, medical providers must charge standard prices. This keeps costs down, but it also means physicians in Germany earn between half and two-thirds as much as their U.S. counterparts.
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POPSThe ‘Costs’ of Medical Care by Thomas Sowell NRO
countries where the medical training may not be the best. In short, reducing doctors’ income is not reducing the cost of medical care, it is refusing to pay those costs. Like other ways of refusing to pay costs, it has consequences. Any one of us can reduce medical costs by refusing to pay them. In our own lives, we recognize the consequences. But when someone with a gift for rhetoric tells us that the government can reduce the costs without consequences, we are ready to believe in such political miracles. There are some ways in which the real costs of medical care can be reduced, but the people who are leading the charge for a government takeover of medical care are not the least bit interested in actually reducing those costs, as distinguished from shifting the costs around or just refusing to pay them. The high costs of “defensive medicine” " expensive tests, medications, and procedures required to protect doctors and hospitals from ruinous lawsuits, rather than
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POPSTerminally ill grandmother 'left to starve' by doctors Under NHS guidance introduced in England, medical staff can withdraw fluid and drugs from dying patents and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away. But this approach can also mask signs of improvement, it has been argued. Miss Ball, who had been looking after her mother before she was admitted to the Conquest hospital, Hastings, East Sussex, on Jan 11, said she had to fight hospital staff for weeks before her mother was taken off the plan and given artificial feeding. Miss Ball, 42, a carer, from Robertsbridge, East Sussex, said: “My mother was going to be left to starve and dehydrate to death. It really is a subterfuge for legalised euthanasia of the elderly on the NHS. ”
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POPSUK has 1% of world's population but 20% of its CCTV cameras
An old article but still pretty accurate. you cannot move in London without being seen by at least 3 cameras at any one point. It is the definition of a police state, the police also have sub-machine guns, (H&K MP5k's for anyone interested) while you can be arrested for carrying a penknife if its blade is more than an inch long, because of the laws now concerning blades and knives. as well as the other tricks like LRADs (not new) which are now common place around the world. All backed by by ignorant and dangerous attitudes of the police. Again as always don't take my word for it look it up. The report says: "It is not entirely absurd to imagine that supermarkets' loyalty card data might one day be used by the Government to identify people who ignored advice to eat healthily or who drank too much, so that they could be given a lower priority for NHS treatment". "We have supermarkets collecting data on our shopping habits and also offering life insurance services"
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POPSJury says chemotherapy drug death was "manslaughter" continued If you accidentally shoot your best friend in a hunting accident, you're held responsible (unless you're the U.S. Vice President, of course). If you have a swimming pool in your back yard, and a drunken neighbor drowns in your pool, you're also held responsible. But somehow, if you're a doctor or pharmacist, and you prescribe a fatal dose of toxic chemicals to a patient, you're off the hook! Doctors and pharmacists have been getting away with murder for so long that no one even remembers what it's like to hold them responsible for their actions. Let's face it: They're in the business of dealing poisons. And when you deal in poison, there needs to be a level of personal responsibility that's adhered to by working professionals. But instead of professionalism, what we're seeing in this case is the complete abandonment of any such notion. When the patient dies, they simply "lose the paperwork" to cover their tracks.
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POPS Masters of illusion: The great management consultancy swindle The more I thought about it, the grander it seemed. The next morning, I sent out 10 CVs. One ended up in the hands of the founding partner of a small and enlightened consultancy firm based in New York. I landed the job by providing a credible response to this question: How many pubs are there in Great Britain? The purpose of that question, I realised after the interview, was to see how easily I could talk about a subject of which I knew almost nothing, on the basis of facts that were almost entirely fictional. It was an excellent introduction to management consulting.
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POPS Is Britain's Health-Care System Really That Bad? How does NHS health care compare with U.S. health care? Like most developed countries, Britain ranks above the U.S. in most health measurements. Its citizens have a longer life expectancy and lower infant mortality, and the country has more acute-care hospital beds per capita and fewer deaths related to surgical or medical mishaps. Britain achieves these results while spending proportionally less on health care than the U.S. — about $2,500 per person in Britain, compared with $6,000 in the U.S. For these reasons, the World Health Organization (WHO) ranked Britain 18th in a global league table of health-care systems (the U.S. was ranked 37th). However, there are measures by which the U.S. outperforms Britain: for instance, the U.S. has lower cancer mortality rates.
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POPSOpponents of U.S. healthcare reform take on... the U.K.'s National Health Service This is a good example of what happens when a political culture develops in which true facts no longer matter. In order to discredit the current plans for health-care reform, opponents are trying to tar it with the National Health Service's failures. Only problem is, most of the failures they describe are made up. I kind of like the super-glue story, though. I mean, hell, I pay for a group dental plan through my job, and my wife needs an implant, and I'm seriously considering a second mortgage to pay for it. And I have insurance. Somehow, these supposed British horror stories haven't convinced yet me that our current system is so wonderful that we shouldn't change it. Remember: the U.K. has the 18th-ranked healthcare system in the world; the U.S. has the 37th; and we spend plenty more than they do.
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POPSMD's Intentionally End Lives in 1 in 6 UK Deaths The last paragraph is really shocking. Before the whole debate over state healthcare started in the US, 16.5% all deaths were physician assisted. And that's only mentioned in passing, not as the lead in the article.
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POPSUK: Sentenced to death on the NHS (National Health Service) “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), 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."
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POPSPremature baby 'left to die' by doctors after birth at 21 wk 'When he was born, he put out his arms and legs and pushed himself over,' said Miss Capewell. 'A midwife said he was breathing and had a strong heartbeat and described him as a "little fighter". 'I kept asking for the doctors but the midwife said, "They won't come and help, sweetie. Make the best of the time you have with him."' Miss Capewell said she had to argue her right to receive birth and death certificates which meant she could have a proper funeral. The medical guidance for NHS hospitals, limiting care of the most premature babies, was drawn up by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in 2006. The guidelines are clear: no baby below 22 weeks gestation should be resuscitated.
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POPSJust Not the Answer For the USA Modeling a system on the UK or any European country just won't work here. Rationing, guidelines for docs to follow, the high cost...just three reasons to stop this nonsense. TORT REFORM FIRST!
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