Is The U.S. Clinically Insane?

Insanity is often defined as doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. The British National Health Service (NHS) has a history of such “insanity.” They maintain their healthcare system without change despite repeated episodes of preventable patient deaths. So what does the U.S. do? President Obama wants to emulate their system here. Insanity!

We start our story with the Bristol (England) Royal Infirmary, which enjoyed a reputation as a world-class surgery center for children with heart problems. When someone began to question that reputation and asked for outcomes data, a cover-up started, just like Watergate.

Patient results were fabricated. Potential whistleblowers were intimidated. There were public distortions and denials. Eventually, the British government empaneled a “Commission” (their term for blue-ribbon panel), which released its Bristol Report in June 2001.

After confirming the terrible patient outcomes, the Commission did the unexpected. Instead of blaming specific individuals, the Commission identified the root cause: the system and its culture, one of intolerance and corruption. The system that was supposed to protect the patients protected itself instead, at the patients’ expense, literally to their deaths.

A few years later, similar events were made public at the Stafford (England) Trust Hospitals. “Trust” is the word the NHS uses for a division, like the old Cook County Hospital System. Despite outcries over Stafford and reminders of Bristol, there was no change in the system — just in the names of some players.

In 2010, the chief of the United Lincolnshire (England again) Hospitals Trust was concerned about needless deaths in his hospitals. When he tried to move these concerns up the NHS corporate chain, he was gagged (legally) and then fired. A new cover-up started, which took over two years to see the light of day.

A 14 Feb 2013 headline read, “Deaths, lies and the NHS: Shocking new healthcare scandals emerge in UK.” As previously documented in other NHS hospitals, there is evidence of “filthy wards … understaffing … excess deaths … [and] avoidable deaths.” The NHS chief, Sir David Nicholson, clearly wanted to protect the system’s reputation more than protect sick Britons.

Read more at American Thinker:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/is_the_us_clinically_insane.html#ixzz2LZm6ePln
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