Former NHS director dies after operation is cancelled four times at her own hospital

[Kablooie]

A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation - at her own hospital.
Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.
But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.
Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust - the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

Read more:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1371861/NHS-director-dies-operation-cancelled-times-hospital.html

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I'm personally for single payer medical but I thought this might be with discussing.

[Merlot]

1. It's a sad story but not sure how it's relevant to single payer.

If she were in america, her operations could have been cancelled because her insurance company decided it was to expensive, dropped her from it's coverage, or ruled the operations "experimental."

I don't see why she should get special treatment because of the position she held. Also, it is possible she was to sick to have the operations.

[Kablooie]

3. If her wait was due to the system it could be relevant.

There may have been other reasons which aren't relevant though.
Her husband wants an investigation.

[CreekDog]

10. surgeries don't get cancelled in non-single payer systems?

:wtf:

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. It's an outrage

important people aren't supposed to die awaiting operations. That's for the little people.

:sarcasm:

[emilyg]

4. Nobody's suregery should be cancelled that many times.

[Spider Jerusalem]

5. The only sources I can find for that story are from the Daily Mail and the Daily Express.

Helpful hint: the Daily Mail is a very right-wing tabloid newspaper. It's roughly the journalistic equivalent of Fox News. It specialises in Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism and misogyny; the Daily Express is if anything worse. They both have a pro-Tory and frequently anti-NHS agenda. This is worth keeping in mind. I would recommend not using either as a source.

[Kablooie]

6. Ah ha. That's good to know.

[darkstar3]

7. +1

[hack89]

19. Here's the local paper

http://www.thisistotalessex.co.uk/news/NHS-trust-director-dies-operations-cancelled/article-3390891-detail/article.html

[drm604]

8. "for single payer but"

"I'm personally for single payer medical but I thought this might be with discussing."

This sentence implies that you think that this story may be an argument against single payer.

How many people have died due to insurance companies delaying or denying operations? How many people have died because they didn't even have insurance? This story is a tragedy. So are all the stories of deaths caused by insurance companies. One story does not make an argument. No system is perfect. The question is, which system has less imperfections and injustices?

[Kablooie]

9. See? It's worth discussing. You're bringing up points to consider.

Also, over in freeperland they refuse to post anything that disagrees with their views.
I believe we can handle alternate ideas because they can get us to think deeper about what we believe in.

[drm604]

14. I'm not discussing what you're discussing.

You're discussing single payer versus private insurance, and assuming that your anecdote has value in that discussion. I'm discussing whether or not this anecdote has any value in that discussion. Two different things.

You're using rhetorical misdirection to try to make me appear to be hypocritical. I'm not biting.

[The Straight Story]

11. It's not the system (single payer) it's the implementation

We're Americans. We invented TV, Walked on the moon, Space Shuttle, etc - I think we can come up with a way to adopt single payer and learn from the problems of other countries and make it work better :)

[Spider Jerusalem]

12. Cherry picking anecdotes isn't any way to go about assessing a healthcare system either.

The biggest difference: everyone who's legally resident in the UK has access to the NHS. 45 million Americans have no health insurance. The UK also has lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy. You can find horror stories and failures in any system, but the British system still works better than the American one, I'd say.

[McCamy Taylor]

13. Patient's gallbladder ruptures and he has massive complications, because he had no insurance

to get the gallbladder out when his life was not in danger.

A story that happens all the time in the United States of "You Don't Get Health Care Unless You Have Insurance."

Woman's localized breast cancer turns into metastatic disease and she dies in excrutiating pain. Another all too common story.

There are a lot of reasons why doctors might have postponed putting a feeding tube in this woman (reading between the lines that seems to have been what was going on.) Maybe they were hoping that she would be able to take regular food by mouth and prevent a whole host of complications that can come from having a G-tube. Maybe they were afraid she had too many medical problems to survive the surgery. Maybe they were right and she would have died months earlier if they had rushed the procedure.

[Shagbark Hickory]

15. We don't know why the surgeries were abandoned. You make it seem like it was because there were too

many people getting surgeries and not enough capacity.

Who knows? Just speculation at this point. Good fodder for the thuglicans and kochroaches

[Snoutport]

16. Is that article from one of Rupert Murdoch's papers? Might as well be from FOX

[Kablooie]

17. Someone on another website said they thought that the UK law was...

that if the government was not able to provide a needed operation within a certain time period the patient could go to other countries and the UK government would pay for it.

This sounds like a good policy to me.
I don't know whether it's actually in the UK system or not.

[Hannah Bell]

18. UK has been defunding & jacking NHS around for some time.

Just like here, the game is to break it & move to completely privatized health care.

[Festivito]

20. Do note: RW news source; UK pays

The rich have nothing better to do than to try and destroy public services that they can afford on their own, and thereby get privileged services. And it does not bother them that those privileges are at the expense of other people's lives.