by Tina Grazier
The following headline was a shocker: “Man, 22, Dies After Liver Transplant Refused”. This is an incredibly sad story but the headline, which makes the healthcare provider seem cruel and heartless, doesn’t begin to tell the whole story.
Many people are placed on waiting lists each year for organ transplant. Their lives hang in the balance as they wait for events to unfold. Often they lose their lives before fate can hand them a miracle. That was not the case with this young man. This young man started drinking at age 11. When he began to have serious medical problems and discovered he would need a liver transplant he started attending AA meetings, but sadly this choice came too late. Was it wrong for the medical community to deny a person so young this vital life saving surgery? Could the real reason he was denied care be a lack of medical insurance?
In this country with “the best health care system in the world” that’s a question that has come up in conversations about national health care proposals . Reading this story peaked my curiosity because I wondered if he would be counted among those without adequate insurance.
Other stories tell of similarly sad consequences. One headline asks why foreign patients can receive organ transplants when citizens are being denied. The article tells the story of 500 people who died last year waiting for transplants. Many more have become too ill for the surgery during the long wait period and will eventually die. Are these patients being denied life saving surgeries due to a lack of adequate insuranceor care? Would they be counted as people who die because they don’t have adequate health insurance?
Yesterday a blog friend told us how many people supposedly die every year because they don’t have health insurance. Should we be panicked and outraged? Should we call our representatives in Washington and demand healthcare reform NOW before another *** die this year?
Well the answer is a resounding, NO! You see these stories come out of the United Kingdom where a national health care system (NHS) is already in place. A government system cannot guarantee that people won’t die for any number of reasons…some of them very sad indeed.
The article below features testimony from a doctor about the NHS system and the problems they experience:
“Whistleblower: Surgeon breaks cover over NHS beds crisis”
** One of Britain’s leading trauma surgeons has broken cover to expose the scandal of a national shortage of emergency trauma beds which is leading to thousands of serious injury victims suffering in agony. In an unprecedented intervention by a senior practitioner in the NHS, Martin Bircher, a consultant at St George’s hospital in London, one of Europe’s leading centres in the treatment of major accident victims, has revealed a system paralysed by red tape and disputes over funding, which is putting thousands of patients waiting for treatment in specialist wards at risk. ** “The first step to dealing with the problem is an acceptance and realisation that the system isn’t working with trauma and other emergency services in medicine. Sending each other forms and bills is not a good way of doing it. I’m acutely aware that resources are an issue. But basic emergency services should be of the highest quality. If we consider ourselves a leading nation we should have a first-class emergency healthcare system. We do not, and the situation is worsening. ** “It’s pot luck where you go. There’s not a defined system. We have to fight every day to get patients in. We have to break through the bureaucracy and develop a new system. There is a lack of intensive care beds in London and around the country which further magnifies the problem. **
People die every year for many reasons all over the world. The idea that a lack of healthcare insurance is the major cause of tthese deaths is absurd. Citizens in the UK are tired of paying taxes for a system that serves them so poorly. Why would we let ourselves be pushed into such a system. Would our government do a better job? We have no reason to suspect that it would. More likely it will only compound whatever problems we are currently struggling to overcome?
I have an idea. If indeed the government can find “savings” by overhauling the system to help pay for national healthcare, why don’t they apply those principles to the government programs that are already in place and see whether the actual result is considerable saving and better care? Here are four of the proposals that could be tried on Medicare and Medicaid:
1) Prevention and primary care for everyone so that people don’t need expensive treatment for diseases that could have been prevented or treated early at a much lower cost.
2) Investment in health information technology that will help reduce wasteful spending across the health care system. Some examples include eliminating duplicative diagnostic tests and preventing medical errors.
3) Researching which health care treatments work the best and encouraging their widespread use.
4) Lower drug costs by bargaining for lower drug costs, allowing the importation of safe medicines from other developed countries, and increasing the use of generic drugs.
The 22 year old in England had insurance – he had national health care.