Tag Archives: Socialized Medicine

Saddam’s Torture Doctor Practicing Medicine in Great Britain

By Duane Lester - - 0 Comments

In 2004, Dr Mohammed Kassim Al-Byati was approved by Great Britain’s Labor government and permitted to work as a doctor with the National Health Service.

Up until that point, he had been working for Saddam Hussein:

Checks failed to uncover his history of working for the notorious Iraqi Intelligence Agency, which ran the country in a reign of terror during the Saddam years.

His job was to patch up torture victims so that they could be subjected to more appalling treatment.

In 2007, Al-Byati contacted the Home Office to confess to his  horrific past so that he could  claim asylum.

But, incredibly, this did not prevent him from  carrying on earning tens of thousands of pounds working at a hospital in Wales.

I hope they at least had the sense to put in to work on emergency trauma cases, considering the damages he had to deal with in Saddam’s torture rooms:

Favoured methods used by his secret police included eye-gouging; piercing of hands with an electric drill; suspension from a ceiling; electric shock; rape and other forms of sexual abuse; beating of the soles of feet; mock executions; extinguishing cigarettes on the body, and acid baths.

You can kind of sympathize with his story.  He says he and his family would have been killed or worse if he had not done what he did by patching up torture victims so they could be tortured some more, but as Dave Blout points out at Right Wing News, there seems to be a lack of sympathy for the victims:

He said: ‘There were some bruises, some cut wounds, mostly on the arms. Not with a knife, probably with a wood thing.

‘Not bleeding much because it was one day, two days before they called me. They looked like somebody who had a big accident.

‘There are two men with you and the prisoner can’t even look at you. I can’t do more than dressing, only simple suturing.

‘I said two people need to be transferred to hospital.

‘What’s going to happen after that? Are they going to torture them? I would say yes but I  haven’t seen with my own eyes. It’s just assumption.’

Asked whether he thought the prisoners had survived, Al-Byati said: ‘They were alive when I left,’ and then laughed.

If he was a little more concerned about their fate, I would be more inclined to believe his story about being a reluctant party to the torture.  But that last statement, followed by the laugh, makes me doubt he was as reluctant as he would like us to believe.

The real travesty here is how a man like this can be let into a country like Great Britain and not be subject to prosecution.

But it’s set up to let Great Britain become a safe haven for war criminals:

One perversity of the asylum system is that the worse the crimes an applicant has been involved in, the more likely he is to be allowed to stay.

He can claim that, if sent back to the country where the offences were committed, he may be subjected to degrading treatment, which is not allowed under the Human Rights Act.

In the past some asylum seekers have made their past exploits sound worse to bolster their case.

A report last year branded Britain a ‘safe haven’ for war criminals with hundreds of people wanted for murder and torture living here free from prosecution.

Wonderful.

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NHS Docs Miss Six Inch Toilet Brush Embedded in Hind End, Resulting in Girl’s Death

By Duane Lester - - 1 Comment

I imagine if I was drunk enough to fall off the toilet and break a toilet brush off in my rear quadrant, I would still be lucid enough to explain to the doctor that he was going to get a pair of weapons grade forceps and yank that plastic impalement out of my backside.

However, in Great Britain, not only did that not happen, but following x-rays of Cindy Corton’s buttocks, she was declared toilet brush free and sent on her way, despite her protestations.

The doctors negligence resulted in her death:

…it took Mrs Corton, of Sleaford, Lincolnshire, two years to convince doctors that the handle was lodged in flesh of her bottom.

By then what should have been a routine procedure to remove it had become much more dangerous because the handle had become embedded in her pelvis.

After two unsuccessful operations in 2007, Mrs Corton underwent further, much riskier surgery and died from massive blood loss at Nottingham’s Queen’s Medical Centre after a ten-hour operation in June last year.

Recording a narrative verdict, coroner Stuart Fisher criticised Dr Killian Mbewe, who first examined Mrs Corton at Grantham hospital.

Despite being told what had happened he simply had an X-ray taken which revealed nothing.

‘It appears Dr Mbewe did not seek a second opinion,’ said Mr Fisher.

‘My view is that this failure to pursue further medical inquiries at this stage was a very serious error on his part.

‘Had he done so and surgery had taken place I have no doubt Mrs Corton would be alive today.

Think about the worst doctor you have ever visited. Don’t you think even they would notice a six inch piece of toilet brush in your butt?

Don’t you think that in America, you wouldn’t have to fight for two years to get it removed?

Behold the wonders of single payer, where the most random injury can result in your death.

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Canadian Death Panel Decides Baby Should Die, Canadian Court Agrees

By Duane Lester - - 66 Comments

How many liberals have clamored for the humanity of the Canadian Health Care system? I think it’s safe to say that at one time, a majority of them have advocated for a single payer system.

One of the problems with single payer is the government can decide to stop paying because some “death panel” declared the patient’s life not worth the money required to keep them alive.

For example, a panel in Canada’s health care system has decided to remove a baby from life support, despite the parents protestations. The parents when to court. The court found in favor of the government.

So now, rather than die at home, with loved ones surrounding him, baby Joseph Maraachli will die at the hospital, at the hands of the Canadian health care system:

The father and relatives of one-year-old Joseph Maraachli wept outside a London courthouse after an emotional Justice Helen Rady upheld the earlier decision of an independent provincial tribunal forcing the baby’s parents to comply with doctors’ orders.

With all of their legal avenues exhausted, the family will have to say goodbye to Joseph Monday morning — on Family Day — when his breathing tube will be removed.

“I do my best for my baby. My son is not a criminal . . . to just let him die,” dad Moe Maraachli said through tears.

“They are taking my baby away from me . . . Where is the humanity?”

He said he didn’t know how to break the news to his wife Sana Nader, who was too upset to sit through the day’s court proceedings, or explain to their seven-year-old son Ali what’s going to happen to his little brother.

The parents have accepted the inevitable death of Joseph, and asked the hospital to perform a tracheotomy “which would open up a direct airway through an incision in Joseph’s trachea and make it possible to bring the baby home” to die.

The hospital refused because that might lead to an infection, which could kill him.

No, really:

Although the couple has accepted their baby boy’s inevitable death, they insisted that it occur peacefully at home and not by removing his breathing tube, which will cause him to choke since he can’t swallow or breathe on his own. The parents asked for a tracheotomy, which would open up a direct airway through an incision in Joseph’s trachea and make it possible to bring the baby home.

But doctors refused to perform the procedure, citing serious risks of infection, pneumonia and other possible complications.

Behold the logic of government.

It gets worse:

They have no compassion for us,” a tearful Faith said.

“I believe when the medical world doesn’t understand a situation, they just want to get rid of it,” Samar said. “That’s exactly what’s happening.”

Outside court, all the lawyers involved agreed Joseph’s is a “tragic” case but a decision had to be made in the child’s best interest.

In the world of single payer health care, it is the lawyers that decide what is in your child’s best interest, not you. It is the lawyers that decide the treatment your child gets, and whether your child gets to live, or die.

This is the system the liberals want to foist upon you. See it for what it is. Cold and inhuman.

Cross posted at Right Wing News.

Update:

Linked at Q & O and Liberty Pundits.

And Memeorandum has started a thread on this post.

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Feds Deciding When Healthcare Science Costs Too Much To Save Lives

By Duane Lester - - 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

(Originally posted at Publius Formum.)

If anyone wants a current example of what is looming ahead for medical science at the hands of Obamacare, the Avastin controversy is a perfect one. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to de-list the cancer drug Avastin one reason being that it is a drug too expensive for government to fund. It is scary to think that the federal government can summarily dismiss cancer drugs merely because of expense, but that is what happens when government starts counting the beans. It becomes an issue of cost instead of effectiveness.

There were other reasons that the FDA wants to dump Avastin, but cost was one of them. One of those that sat in judgment of Avastin admitted that cost was a factor in the decision to delegitimize the treatment. Natalie Compagni Portis, a member of one of the panels that the FDA convened to investigate the drug, said, “We aren’t supposed to talk about cost, but that’s another issue.”

In some cases it costs as much as $88,000 annually for an Avastin breast cancer regimen, certainly not a cheap deal. But who is the government to decide that a lifesaving (or life extending or life changing) drug is too expensive for us to be allowed to use?

Imagine what this might mean for future experimental drug treatments? How many drug companies will continue pursuing new treatments when they begin to see the expense involved? How many promising drugs will be abandoned as companies become fearful that the costs of development will never be returned in sales because of government proscriptions?

Let’s put it in different terms. Remember when flat screen TVs first came out? They often cost over $20,000 a set. Certainly only the very rich could afford such a ridiculously extravagant price for a mere television, right? But as more people clamored for them companies began to experiment on production techniques and the technology began to come down in price. More people bought flat screens when prices fell to $10,000, then $5,000, then $2,000 per set. Thanks to the profit motive more and more customers could finally afford flat screen TVs until today that is practically all you can buy, often they are under $1,000.

Now, imagine where our TV technology would be if the federal government stepped in and summarily decided that $20,000 was too much for a TV and prevented companies from selling products that were initially so highly priced? TV manufacturers would have instantly ceased experimenting and manufacturing the over priced products, prices would never have come down through competition and innovation, and today few people would have the benefit of a flat screen TV.

This example may seem trivial, but the drug manufacturing industry is not that much different than the example above. The fact is drug companies are companies first and foremost. They manufacture products for sale. They aren’t charities. And if these companies see no profit at all in the effort they will not bother pursuing it. That is simply a fact of life.

That fact of life, that quashing of the entrepreneurial spirit, the destruction of the profit motive, all at the hands of government, will also quash new drugs that might bring lifesaving cures in the future. Avastin is one example of the heavy hand of government putting us all at risk.

(Also check out Renee Ellmers For Congress on the issue.)
____________
“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson

Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.

For a full bio, please CLICK HERE.

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Doctors Should Work Weekends, Evenings Says Former White House Economist

By Duane Lester - - 2 Comments

Peter Orszag, former Obama economist, is suggesting that doctors need to start working evening and weekends. Here’s a taste:

Doctors, like most people, don’t love to work weekends, and they probably don’t enjoy being evaluated against their peers. But their industry can no longer afford to protect them from the inevitable. Imagine a drugstore open only five days a week, or a television network that didn’t measure its ratings. Improving the quality of health care and reducing its cost will require that doctors make many changes — but working weekends and consenting to quality management are two clear ones.

That’s why an effort at New York University Langone Medical Center to institute both of these changes is so important. If it succeeds, it will help point the way to the health care system of the future.

First, weekends. It’s never good to be hospitalized, but you really don’t want to be hospitalized on a weekend. There are fewer doctors around, and people admitted on Saturdays and Sundays fare relatively poorly.

One study in 2007 found, for example, that for every 1,000 patients suffering heart attacks who were admitted to a hospital on a weekend, there were 9 to 10 more deaths than in a comparable group of patients admitted on a weekday. The weekend patients were less likely to quickly receive the invasive procedures they needed — like coronary artery bypass grafts or cardiac catheterization.

It’s not just a safety issue but, for less life-threatening medical problems, also a matter of convenience. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to schedule your elective surgery on a Saturday if you wanted? Most hospitals don’t offer that option.

And then there are the economics of a $750 billion-a-year industry letting its capacity sit idle a quarter or more of the time. If hospitals were in constant use, costs would fall as expensive assets like operating rooms and imaging equipment were used more fully. And if the workflow at existing hospitals was spread more evenly over the entire week, patients could more often enjoy the privacy of single-bed rooms.

When I read this, I thought, “I’ve read this somewhere before.”

And I had.  Three years ago.  In Great Britain:

GPs will be asked to work in the evening and at weekends after the Government indicated that it is to reopen the contentious issue of out-of-hours care by family doctors, The Times has learnt.

Alan Johnson, the Health Secretary, will tell doctors this week that it is ludicrous that surgeries shut their doors as people leave work and that GPs, whose average salary now tops £100,000, must become more flexible and “customer orientated”.

He will ask Sir Ara Darzi, professor of surgery at Imperial College, London, who was appointed a health minister by Gordon Brown in July, to find a solution as part of his review of the future of the NHS.

So how exactly has that worked out in Great Britain?

Exactly like you’d think:

The huge extent to which the NHS needs foreign doctors to treat patients out of hours is revealed today.

A third of primary care trusts are flying in GPs from as far away as Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Hungary, Italy and Switzerland because of a shortage of doctors in Britain willing to work in the evenings and at weekends.

The stand-ins earn up to £100 [$162] an hour, and one trust paid Polish and German doctors a total of £267,000 [$434,674] in a year, a Daily Mail investigation has found.

It raises fresh concerns that British patients are being treated by exhausted doctors without a perfect command of English.

Here’s an idea.  Get the government out of medicine and let the doctors decide when they want to work.

It’s called freedom.

Hat Tip:  Gateway Pundit

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27 Year Old Cancer Victim Denied Treatment By British "Death Panel"

By Duane Lester - - 0 Comments

Imagine being 27 years old, with cancer, and the only chance you have of beating it is with treatment of “CD25 targeted radiotherapy.”

What’s “CD25 targeted radiotherapy?” Who cares? It’s the only thing that gives you a chance of survival.

Now consider how it would feel to wait 13 weeks while a panel of bureaucrats decides whether it’s worth the money to fund the treatment.

It would be excruciating, wouldn’t it?

Try to imagine the despair when you learn they denied the treatment.

Heather Parkinson, 27, from Preston, said NHS Central Lancashire kept her waiting for 13 weeks as they considered whether to pay £3,000 for a trial of CD25 targeted radiotherapy at the Royal Free Hospital in London.

However, they eventually decided not to fund the treatment, which could successfully treat her Hodgkin’s lymphoma, because it is “not licensed”.

In a free market, she would be able to pay for the treatment herself. If she does that in Great Britain, she’s cut off from the government teat and will have to pay for everything herself, despite the taxes she has paid to provide the health care.

It would create a two tier system, and that wouldn’t be fair to those who can’t afford better treatment. So in the name of fairness, Heather will probably die.

Seem fair to you?

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Karl Rove: Obama Hasn't Closed the Health-Care Sale – WSJ.com

By Wes Weber - - 0 Comments

Every sales person knows that it is critical to successful selling is truth in advertising and a clear, sincere sales presentation. Unfortunately, in the health care debacle, we are being fed lies and false promises that a true analysis shows to be false.

The true costs of the reorganization of 1/6 of our economy is still being computed, but the facts that are coming out are quite concerning, at best.  Mr. Rove, who is known for his analytic abilities gives us a glimpse today in the Wall Street Journal:

The problem for Mr. Obama is that the Baucus bill is being sold on the strength of accounting tricks that make it appear that it won’t add to the deficit. This is true for the other health-reform bills, too. If fiscally conservative Democrats sign on to the bill now after publicly saying they are doing so because it doesn’t add to the deficit, they may end up bailing once the tricks are revealed to the public.One trick is easily explained. The bill imposes tax hikes and benefit cuts right away, including $121 billion of Medicare reductions between 2011 and 2015. But new spending really doesn’t start until five years out 2015 and isn’t fully operational until 2017. The bill uses 10 years worth of tax hikes and benefit cuts to fund a few years worth of benefits.

And that is just a start.

Some governors are also figuring out that the proposal in the Baucus bill to expand Medicaid will shift a big chunk of the federal health-care tab to states. States, after all, pick up an average of 47% of Medicaid’s costs—and expanding it will force states to spend more.

Then there are $400 billion in benefit cuts that are frightening seniors. Jeffrey A. Anderson of the Pacific Research Institute has pointed out that the Baucus bill cuts Medicare payments to physicians by 25% within two years and keeps payments at that level forever, without adjusting for inflation. If this becomes law, doctors who take Medicare patients will see their real income decline each year.

via Karl Rove: Obama Hasn’t Closed the Health-Care Sale – WSJ.com.

Karl makes the point that The President hasn’t sold his snake oil to us yet and the numbers, if made public will not strengthen his sale at all.

No wonder the leadership of the democratic houses in Congress are holding their meetings to complete the legislation behind closed doors! For a President who promised the most transparent administration in history and promised that C-Span would be broadcasting the proceedings for all of us to see, the hypocracy has reached absurd levels! And the ‘traditional media’ is ignoring the whole thing!  Where is Bob Woodward when we need him?

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Keep the pedal to the metal!

By Douglas Weber - - 0 Comments

Don’t back down now! You, the American people have put a lot of pressure on your senators and representatives. You have let them know that you do NOT want socialist medicine to be implemented here in the USA and do not want any steps taken in that direction. They have heard you and even the President has already made concessions that would slow the march toward socialist health care but do NOT mistake this as them having given up. If we let the pressure off of them now we will lose the battle. We cannot be satisfied with slowing things down. We need to STOP this measure now. Call for less government involvement not more. Call for reduction in state and federal mandates. Call for TORT reform now! call for improved health care portability where we get the control back in the hands of the people!

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When you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there (by Wes Weber)

By Douglas Weber - - 0 Comments

(Another gem forwarded by my father for publication!)

Senator Kent Conrad, D ND, clarified for all of us the health care reform problem, with his appearance on Fox News Sunday, August 15th. He stated clearly and without any limiters that Obama does not have a plan for Health Care Reform. He has left that up to Congress!

Just think about that! He does not have a plan, or if he does, he has not shared it with the Democrat leaders in Congress, but, instead has left it up to them to create a reform bill. According to Politico.com:

Linda Douglass, communications director of the White House Office of Health Reform, e-mailed: “Nothing has changed. The president has always said that what is essential is that health insurance reform must lower costs, ensure that there are affordable options for all Americans and it must increase choice and competition in the health insurance market. He believes the public option is the best way to achieve those goals.” (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26180.html#ixzz0OSpxwOZe)

The obvious problem is the fact, reaffirmed by Senator Conrad, that The President does not have a Health Care Reform Plan. Therefore any plan will achieve his objective and you can bet he will sign it! This seems to result in his ability to promise that almost anything that the polls say is important, is in his plan. If he hasn’t got a plan, then anything can be promised as in it or not in it. Instead of the details required in a plan we hear of his essential ingredients which vary based on the audience. In his initial speech to Congress on the State of the Union he promised to reduce the cost of health care while covering every American.

The biggest problem in The President’s ‘essentials’ is basic arithmetic! Including all Americans currently uninsured, which has been defined in various circles as between 20 and 47 million people, will add a major stress on the current system. If they must be assigned to the existing doctors and if they are able to go in for wellness checks and minor problems at no cost to the patient, government cost and provider stresses will be increased dramatically. The President has promised to keep costs down and even to turn the rising cost curve to a negative curve. At the same time he has assured us that there will not be rationing for older Americans who need medical care the most. This defies all logic and cannot be calculated using basic arithmetic or even new math!

There have been numerous attempts to do this through nationalized medicine such as is the case in most of Europe and Canada and so far there is not a single example of success. In the US it has been attempted in Massachusetts and Oregon. In every case cited, the programs are under fierce financial strains and coverage is rationed in one way or another. The newly elected head of the Canadian Healthcare System has declared this month that their system is about to implode and Vancouver is closing emergency care facilities due to lack of funds.

But none of the cases of failure seem to matter to our legislators and our President. The President sets lofty, mutually contradictory goals and the legislators rush to create plans tailored to give them full power over our lives without any concern for our feelings. They have forgotten or ignored the line from our Declaration of Independence that reads: “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

It is time for the governed to make it clear to the government that they are not given the power to do as they please for their own aggrandizement, but, they are to use their powers to meet the wishes of “We the People” within the strict framework of the US Constitution. If they do not understand this basic principle, then they should be replaced by those who do.

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Obama Feels You Should Trust Him More Than God?

By Duane Lester - - 4 Comments

As I was driving home today, I heard the latest attempt at getting the masses on Obama and the other statist’s side concerning this health care reform bill. It was a commercial featuring various religious people pushing the idea that it would be immoral or against God’s wishes for us to prevent this bill from becoming law.

Here’s the commercial:





Now Obama is using religious terms to rail on those against this plan, claiming they are “bearing false witness.”

This is a blatant attempt to appeal to the emotion of the viewer. It could also be an appeal to authority (the highest authority) by bringing God into the discussion. But what it comes down to is taking care of your brother, figuratively speaking of course. If it were intended to be your real brother, then Barack would have brought his brother out of the ghetto in Kenya and taken him to Five Guys instead of Biden.

In one passage, the woman says, “We keep praying, but our premiums keep rising.” Another says, “Our church has tried to help, but it’s just not enough.”

In other words, God has let us down, so our only solution is big government.

Understand one thing: the foundation of this program is built on immorality. For this program to work, the government has to seize the property of the people who created it, repackage it and redistribute it, after it takes a cut. If you refuse to pay, you go to jail. If you refuse to go to jail, someone with a gun shows up at your house, points it at you and forces you to go to jail.

This isn’t charity. It’s theft.

John Jay said, “No power on earth has a right to take our property from us without our consent.” George Washington said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Socialism combines the two: taking your property, without your consent, with force.

Almost a year ago, after being called a “capitalist asshole,” I wrote:

A capitalist creates a product, or offers a service, for a price. If the price is too high for the public, no one buys it and no one is forced to. The price, when correct, allows the capitalist to pay for the material used in the product, plus a little profit.

Profit. In the mind of a socialist, this is a foul word. Indeed, profit is a word used today to demonize people and organizations. It is the capitalist’s desire for personal gain that leads the socialist to believe they are morally superior, because the socialist’s actions are done for the “common good.” But socialists, as we have already discussed, have nothing to give unless they have already looted it from another. Capitalists give freely from their profits, not what they steal from another at the point of a gun.

Socialists and statists feel they are doing good deeds by taking from the masses and redistributing it, but they are tearing down the foundations of wealth creation. When someone feels they will have little to gain by their success, they will either flee or stop trying. When others can get something without any effort, why would they put forth an effort?

Eventually no one is doing anything more than the minimum.

For real reform, there needs to be drastic change no one is willing to discuss because it would be political suicide. But the attempt by the left to rebrand this as a religious and moral issue is disingenuous. This isn’t about God, and it isn’t about faith. It’s about growing government to a dangerous size. It’s about creating a bureaucracy that will lower the standard of care across the board to raise it for a few.

God has a place in this debate. It is this: trust in Him and He will take care of you.

It’s that simple.

He won’t make it more complicated. That’s the government’s job, which is why we are having this problem in the first place.

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