British Doctors : Patients Are Being Sentenced to Death by Socialized Medicine

[Contumacious]

Sentenced to Death by Socialized Medicine

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across England to help doctors and medical staff deal with dying patients, they can then have fluid and drugs withdrawn and many are put on continuous sedation until they pass away.

Today the UK, Tomorrow the US

 

[namvet]

exactly what Osama wants. the power of life and death

The babies born in hospital corridors: Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices and hospital toilets

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.

[URL="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"]source[/URL]

how many babies will Osama kill here??? hmmmm

 

[Skull Pilot]

The hell with the UK, it's already happening here.

The readers' forum

Oregon has a state run insurance program and would rather pay to kill someone than to continue chemotherapy.

Oh BTW the drug the government refused to pay for was donated to the woman by guess who;

a drug company. Who is the more compassionate entity here?

 

[geauxtohell]

Nothing in that article suggests that this problem is inherent to socialized medicine. A prognosis is a best guess.

When patients are put in hospice, their pain is managed until they pass away. There are no more procedures or interventions. It is the end of the road, medically.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Nothing in that article suggests that this problem is inherent to socialized medicine. A prognosis is a best guess.

When patients are put in hospice, their pain is managed until they pass away. There are no more procedures or interventions. It is the end of the road, medically.

Death Drugs Cause Uproar in Oregon - ABC News

Excuse me but a government run health plan refused a drug to treat cancer and possibly extend a person's life ,which by the way is what the patient wanted, and offered to give her a drug to kill herself instead.

So this situation is obviously inherent in the government run health cars of Oregon.

This was a bottom line decision of cost. Period

It would have cost 4000 a month to treat her and only 50 bucks to off her.

 

[geauxtohell]

Nothing in that article suggests that this problem is inherent to socialized medicine. A prognosis is a best guess.

When patients are put in hospice, their pain is managed until they pass away. There are no more procedures or interventions. It is the end of the road, medically.

Death Drugs Cause Uproar in Oregon - ABC News

Excuse me but a government run health plan refused a drug to treat cancer and possibly extend a person's life ,which by the way is what the patient wanted, and offered to give her a drug to kill herself instead.

So this situation is obviously inherent in the government run health cars of Oregon.

This was a bottom line decision of cost. Period

It would have cost 4000 a month to treat her and only 50 bucks to off her.

Here are the facts:

A lifelong smoker, she was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2005 and quit. The state-run Oregon Health Plan generously paid for thousands of dollars worth of chemotherapy, radiation, a special bed and a wheelchair, according to Wagner.

The cancer went into remission, but in May, Wagner found it had returned. Her oncologist prescribed the drug Tarceva to slow its growth, giving her another four to six months to live.

But under the insurance plan, she can the only receive "palliative" or comfort care, because the drug does not meet the "five-year, 5 percent rule" -- that is, a 5 percent survival rate after five years.

A 2005 New England Journal of Medicine study found the drug erlotinib, marketed as Tarceva, does marginally improve survival for patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer who had completed standard chemotherapy.

The median survival among patients who took erlotinib was 6.7 months compared to 4.7 months for those on placebo. At one year, 31 percent of the patients taking erlotinib were still alive compared to 22 percent of those taking the placebo.

Ms. Wagner had a terminal prognosis. There was no chance that the drug would have stopped the NSCLC (which has one of the worst survival rates of all cancer). The drug, at even odds, might have prolonged her life by two months and there was a 12% chance that she would survive a year.

Either way, she was ultimately going to succomb to her cancer. Private insurers use the same sort of metrics in these instances too. There is simply no getting around the fact that Ms. Wagner had one of the most destructive forms of cancer and was ultimately going to succomb to it after it had come out of remission. Her health plan had covered everything, to include lifestyle measures, up until that point. This is not a basic "cost" issue

While I agree it was callous to send her information about Oregon's Death With Dignity act with the rejection letter, it was most likely incidental. As a terminal patient, she qualifed for that program.

Some facts about the DWDA: It's been in effect since 1997. In that time, about 400 patients have utilized it and in the end, it is ultimately the patient who makes the decision to use it.

 

[Contumacious]

"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."

 

[Political Junky]

Sentenced to Death by Socialized Medicine

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.

Today the UK, Tomorrow the US

Now it's OK to cite the Daily Telegraph, they've won the approval of the cons who once despised that publication.

 

[NYcarbineer]

Is this supposed to be relevant to the US healthcare debate?

It's ironic that conservatives, whose basic philosophy is that if you can't afford healthcare, tough,

try to make hay over situations where a government allegedly isn't spending enough to treat people.

 

[Contumacious]

Now it's OK to cite the Daily Telegraph, they've won the approval of the cons who once despised that publication.

“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.


.