Brit NHS "Free Healthcare for All" lie.

[mistermack]

People donated voluntarily to pay for his surgery, so it didn't cost him anything. Damned charitable and altruistic Americans, what are they thinking embarrassing the NHS that way?

Yeh, change the subject when you have put your foot in it yet again.
He didn't get it done for nothing, and my comment about the US medics grabbing the cash stands.
You're so full of shit. I would be embarrassed to be spouting that much crap.

Didn't cost him a dime. And everybody who paid for it, paid for it completely voluntarily out of the goodness of their hearts, not because some jackbooted thug demanded it from them at gunpoint.

No, he paid for it, out of donations. Are you fucking stupid, or what?

[Hermit]

You're so full of shit. I would be embarrassed to be spouting that much crap.

He is so full of it that it renders him incapable of feeling embarrassed. It's part and parcel of being the quintessential Dunning-Kruger type. It's what you get when extreme incompetence is combined with a delusional sense of being brilliantly competent and capable in one and the same person.

[Seth]

People donated voluntarily to pay for his surgery, so it didn't cost him anything. Damned charitable and altruistic Americans, what are they thinking embarrassing the NHS that way?

Yeh, change the subject when you have put your foot in it yet again.
He didn't get it done for nothing, and my comment about the US medics grabbing the cash stands.
You're so full of shit. I would be embarrassed to be spouting that much crap.

Didn't cost him a dime. And everybody who paid for it, paid for it completely voluntarily out of the goodness of their hearts, not because some jackbooted thug demanded it from them at gunpoint.

No, he paid for it, out of donations. Are you fucking stupid, or what?

He didn't pay for it, other people did, voluntarily. He asked them for help and they gave it. The fact that the surgeon gets paid is utterly irrelevant because surgeons in the NHS get paid too, or had that fact escaped you?

[mistermack]

People donated voluntarily to pay for his surgery, so it didn't cost him anything. Damned charitable and altruistic Americans, what are they thinking embarrassing the NHS that way?

Yeh, change the subject when you have put your foot in it yet again.
He didn't get it done for nothing, and my comment about the US medics grabbing the cash stands.
You're so full of shit. I would be embarrassed to be spouting that much crap.

Didn't cost him a dime. And everybody who paid for it, paid for it completely voluntarily out of the goodness of their hearts, not because some jackbooted thug demanded it from them at gunpoint.

No, he paid for it, out of donations. Are you fucking stupid, or what?

He didn't pay for it, other people did, voluntarily. He asked them for help and they gave it. The fact that the surgeon gets paid is utterly irrelevant because surgeons in the NHS get paid too, or had that fact escaped you?

Got my answer. As if I didn't already know it.

[Seth]

Not only did the NHS refuse to help him, it was the UK government that made him fat to begin with by enabling him. They built him a special house, had caretakers feed him and otherwise facilitated his obesity, then refused to help him get rid of the extra skin after he actually succeeded in losing a massive amount of weight.

Dumb fucks.

Briton who was once the world's fattest man walks through New York's Central Park with 8st fiancée as he celebrates successful surgery to have 4stone of baggy skin removed and shares pictures of how it looks

Paul Mason, 54, once weighed 70st but has lost 46st in five years
NHS refused to remove excess skin but New York surgeon offered to do it
After operation he managed to walk through city with fiancée Rebecca
He said: 'Good riddance. Lifting my leg feels like lifting a wafer-thin piece of paper rather a tree trunk.'
Mr Mason now weighs around 20st and partner Rebecca is 8st
WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT: Pictures of excess skin pictured below

By Martin Robinson for MailOnline

Published: 07:06 EST, 13 May 2015 | Updated: 11:37 EST, 13 May 2015

Smiling with his fiancée in Central Park, this is the Briton once known as the world's fattest man after he had four stone of excess skin removed from his body.

Paul Mason, 54, weighed 70st but by losing 46st in five years surgeons in New York have removed the unsightly folds left after his dramatic weight loss, taking his weight to 20st.

Days afterwards he has been able to stroll a short distance through the city with his partner Rebecca Mountain and he said of the excess skin: 'Good riddance. I'm glad it's gone.'

Scroll down for video
Life-changing: Smiling with his fiancée Rebecca in Central Park, Paul Mason, who once weight 70st has had up to 4st of excess skin removed from his body
+4

Life-changing: Smiling with his fiancée Rebecca in Central Park, Paul Mason, who once weight 70st has had up to 4st of excess skin removed from his body
Support: The former postman, from Ipswich, Suffolk, pictured with Rebecca on national TV in 2013, became had gastric bypass surgery in 2010 after years of over eating

Support: The former postman, from Ipswich, Suffolk, pictured with Rebecca on national TV in 2013, became had gastric bypass surgery in 2010 after years of over eating

The former postman, from Ipswich, Suffolk, became thinner after getting gastric bypass surgery in 2010 but the NHS have refused to give him an operation to remove excess skin.


British doctors said that he needed to prove he would keep his weight down before they did it so he went to the United States because 'the loose skin is having a horrible effect on my life'.
The former postman, from Ipswich, Suffolk, became thinner after getting gastric bypass surgery in 2010 but the NHS have refused to give him an operation to remove excess skin.

The former postman, from Ipswich, Suffolk, became thinner after getting gastric bypass surgery in 2010 but the NHS have refused to give him an operation to remove excess skin.

About half of the skin removed was from Mr Mason's right leg with further significant surgery to what he described as his 'apron', which covered his midriff.

He said: 'The operation entailed the removal of the excess skin left from the weight loss operation. It has certainly improved things for me.'

He said the excess skin had been holding him back.

'I can see me getting around a lot easier,' he said, adding: 'Lifting my leg feels like lifting a wafer-thin piece of paper rather a tree trunk.'

He said he still needed further surgery to remove excess skin elsewhere on his body, including his arms.

He said: 'Life has definitely improved'.

After years living in Suffolk Mr Mason flew to Orange, near Boston last September to live with his fiancée, Rebecca Mountain, who he met online.

In 2013 Mr Mason appeared on television to tell the world of his blossoming relationship with ger Ms Mountain.

Miss Mountain, 41, who is a slender 8st, proposed to him The View last year.

She first got in touch with Mr Mason on Facebook after she saw a television documentary about his extreme obesity.

Appearing on UK breakfast television programme in 2013, in the week they met in person for the first time, she said she 'just felt compelled to reach out and just try to help and that's all it was.'

'I have a lot of drive and just thought I could write letters and support,' she said. 'Things I set my sights on, I just go and do. I just knew that I should try and help.

'He's incredible, a genuine person. Incredibly honest and open about the difficulties he's been through, which helped our relationship.'

Former world's fattest man: At the height of his food addiction, he was eating an entire packet of bacon, four sausages and four eggs complete with bread and hash browns for breakfast

Mr Mason's binge eating began in his 20s at the time of his father's death and a deterioration in his mother's health.

He quit his job as a postman when he was not fit enough to finish his rounds.

As his weight soared he was left unable to stand or walk before finally becoming bed-ridden and being looked after full time by council carers.

Firefighters had to demolish the front wall of his former home so they could drive a fork lift truck inside to lift him out and put him into an ambulance when he needed a hernia operation in 2002.

Mr Mason was later given a purpose-built housing association home with extra wide doorways so he could move around. His care bill cost taxpayers an estimated £100,000 a year and is believed to have topped £1million.

At the height of his food addiction, he was eating an entire packet of bacon, four sausages and four eggs complete with bread and hash browns for breakfast.

He would then eat quadruple portions of fish and chips along with two kebabs for lunch followed by a roast dinner, curries or pizza and more chips in the evening.

Mr Mason finally lost weight after an NHS operation to fit him with a gastric band, but his life was left on hold as he waited for further surgery to remove the excess skin it left behind.

[NineBerry]

Mr Mason finally lost weight after an NHS operation to fit him with a gastric band

[Seth]

Mr Mason finally lost weight after an NHS operation to fit him with a gastric band

And then left him swinging (literally) with all that extra flesh using the lame excuse that he had to prove he'd keep the weight off, as if losing all that weight in the first place wasn't proof enough. My argument stands.

[Seth]

Britain’s NHS tells Mental Health Patients: Stop Smoking Or We Won’t Treat You
Parliament Smokers Club Endorse Smokers Rights
Getty

by Donna Rachel Edmunds6 Jun 20150
British government officials are urging all low and medium security mental health units to go ‘smoke free’, effectively forcing patients off cigarettes. Clinical experts warn that making patients quit against their will is illegal, contravening the Mental Health Act and setting a precedent that could see all sorts of health procedures inflicted upon mental health patients against their wishes.

New figures show that one in three people with a mental health issue smoke, a rate which is markedly higher the general population’s rate of 18.5 percent. In addition, Public Health England (PHE), the body behind the move, has conducted a survey of NHS mental health facilities and found that 64 percent of patients in those facilities smoke.

PHE is using these figures to wage war on smoking in mental health units, urging them to go “smoke free”, which they claim will improve the mental health of patients and save up to £40m a year in psychotropic drugs. The latter claim is based on the suggestion that smoking can interfere with drugs, necessitating much higher doses to be prescribed to offset the effect.

Matthew Day, author of the PHE’s report justifying the policy has insisted that “service users (patients) are just as likely to want to stop smoking as the general population, and can do so when offered support.” However, health authorities are going one step further than merely supporting people who, of their own volition want to give up smoking.

Some units have already forced patients to cease smoking immediately upon arrival. PHE wants the rest to follow suit, in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (which bears the Orwellian acronym ‘NICE’) guidelines stipulating that units should be smoke free.

Mary Yates is the Modern Matron at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) which runs four such facilities. She said: “Since going smokefree in October 2014, SLaM has demonstrated that when patients and staff are given appropriate support, the long standing culture of smoking in mental health services can be broken.

“All SLaM patients are now screened for smoking status at the first contact and offered appropriate help to make a quit attempt or abstain whilst in the smokefree hospital environment.

“Our staff have reinvested time previously spent facilitating smoking, to the provision of therapeutic activities which support health and wellbeing. The benefits to everyone have been significant.”

Ms Yates was happy to be interviewed for a Radio 4 Today segment on the new guidelines which aired on Thursday morning, during which BBC reporter Sima Kotcheta confirmed that, at the Trust’s facilities, “If you’re a patient here, you can’t smoke”.

Ms Yates also appeared on the Jeremy Vine show on BBC Radio 2 later that day, confirming that patients at her units are prevented from smoking upon being admitted. “What we’ve promised to our patients is that within thirty minutes of their admission, if they’re a smoker, we’ll make sure we have the nicotine replacement ready and waiting for them. Our cupboards are full of patches, inhalators, lozenges, whatever people want,” she said.

She insisted that “All of the evidence we have now is suggesting that smoking not only harms people’s physical health but is detrimental to their mental health and wellbeing”. But when Vine confronted her, asking “What evidence?” she was unable to answer. Instead she generalised, repeating that there is “quite compelling evidence suggesting that quitting smoking enhances people’s health and wellbeing”, and underscoring the need for “cost effective treatment”.

In fact, Mr Day’s 33-page paper, which sets out the rationale for banning smoking in mental health units, cites just one research paper on the interaction between chemicals in cigarette smoke and medications, on which the claim that £40m could be saved presumably was based.

That paper, published in 2007, looked at the effects of smoking on medicating for a whole range of health issues, including asthma, heart failure or pneumonia. It cites another study which found that “if a patient is taking clozapine [an anti-psychotic drug] and starts smoking, the clozapine dosage may need to be increased by 1.5 within two to four weeks.” However, it also noted: “smoking does not affect the metabolism of quetiapine, a more widely used atypical antipsychotic.”

Not only does the evidence for the policy look thin at best, the policy may be illegal. Under the Mental Health Act, patients committed to a psychiatric unit cannot be treated for physical health problems, including tobacco addiction, against their will.

The mental health charity Rethink Mental Illness explains: “If you need urgent mental health treatment you can be taken to hospital and given treatment without your consent under the Mental Health Act 1983 (MHA). However, just because you are mentally ill it does not mean you lack capacity.

“You cannot be given treatment for a physical illness without your consent under the Mental Health Act 1983. If you have capacity to make a decision then you can refuse treatment for a physical illness even if you need it.”

Dr Jon Stanley, an emergency medicine practitioner with a decade’s experience in the NHS told Breitbart London: “To treat someone who has been sectioned for a physical illness without their consent could be considered assault. At the very least, it is certainly a slippery slope from treating someone for smoking addiction against their will to forcing any treatment upon them.”

His point was echoed by Simon Clark of the smokers’ rights group Forest, who told the BBC: “Public Health England has no right to deny people choice. Who are they to dictate whether or not a mental health patient can smoke a product that is legally available to every other adult in Britain?

“What PHE is proposing is discrimination. It will target unfairly a group of people who, being dependent on others, has little alternative other than to comply.”

[mistermack]

You can't smoke in hospital.

I thought that was common knowledge. If I can't smoke in the pub, the same should apply to everyone.

Anyway, it's a good idea, and should have happened long ago.

[Seth]

You can't smoke in hospital.

I thought that was common knowledge. If I can't smoke in the pub, the same should apply to everyone.

Anyway, it's a good idea, and should have happened long ago.

You have a choice whether to go to a pub or not. Mental health inpatients do not.

What part of "Clinical experts warn that making patients quit against their will is illegal, contravening the Mental Health Act and setting a precedent that could see all sorts of health procedures inflicted upon mental health patients against their wishes" is unclear to you?

The point being that the "free" NHS mental health care isn't free at all, you have to bow down to the bureaucrats and quit smoking cold-turkey if you want mental health treatment. Presumably if you refuse to not smoke, you won't get health care. It's another example of what happens when you let government control your life, particularly your health care. In a free market medical care system you can look around and find a therapist willing to treat you according to your needs and conditions rather than having some jackass who doesn't like smoking make a government policy that applies to everyone.

That's how socialism works, you see. You obey your masters or they fuck you over...well, they fuck you over MORE than they already do because they are the socialist elite.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

BHS free healthcare is definitely a lie! My occasional table had to go to Debenhams for a triple bypass - BASTITS!

(My trivial, un-meant apologies to any non-Brits that didn't get that post.)

[mistermack]

That's how socialism works, you see. You obey your masters or they fuck you over...well, they fuck you over MORE than they already do because they are the socialist elite.

Very few people are forced to stop. You have a choice. Take it or leave it.
You can always leave it. If you choose to take it, that's your decision.

Anyway, you can always go private in the UK, just like the US. If you want to smoke, see if the private mental hospital will let you. See, we have the best of both worlds. You can go private, like in the US, or you can use the NHS. YOU, on the other hand, don't have that option.

In any case, it's a good thing. If people stop, they benefit enormously.

[mistermack]

BHS free healthcare is definitely a lie! My occasional table had to go to Debenhams for a triple bypass - BASTITS!

(My trivial, un-meant apologies to any non-Brits that didn't get that post.)

I get it, but it doesn't improve it much.

[Seth]

Uber to the rescue when NHS tells man with broken leg to fuck off.

Man forced to take an Uber to the hospital after his broken leg was deemed 'not serious enough' for an ambulance

He was told to dial the non-emergency number as he lay on the ground in agony
Doug Bolton

Friday 19 June 2015
Print
A A A

A London man whose leg was broken after thieves stole his bike was forced to take an Uber taxi to the hospital after he was told that his injury "wasn't serious enough" to warrant an ambulance.

32-year-old Paul Mullan had his bike taken off him by three thieves as he cycled along the towpath next to the River Lea near Tottenham Hale at around 9pm on Tuesday 16 June.

Suffering from a broken leg and lying on the ground in agony, he called 999, only for the person on the other end to tell him to call the 111 non-emergency number as his injury wasn't sufficiently serious for an ambulance.

Eventually, three police officers picked him up and drove him home. He then had to book an Uber taxi to take him to the hospital.

Paul Mullan was cycling along the River Lea towpath when his bike was robbed by three men. Speaking to The Evening Standard, he said he felt "let down" by the emergency services.

"I don't know why they couldn't send me an ambulance or a doctor."

"That is the most disappointing thing. At the time I was incredulous. I'm always a defender of the NHS but I want to know why they didn't listen to my call properly."

Mr Mullan, an IT professional who lives in Walthamstow, was attacked by three men, and police are appealing for witnesses.
Read more: Overwhelmed LAS calls for backup
Proposals for floating bike lane on the Thames
Traffic lights to recognise cyclists in London

All three attackers are black. One is tall, aged 18-20, and wore a burgundy bandanda over his face. Another, of the same age, had afro hair and wore a black jacket. The third attacker was short, around 16 years old and of Somali appearance. He wore a black bomber jacket and blue jeans.

The London Ambulance Service (LAS) aims to reach 75 per cent of category A calls, the most urgent, within eight minutes.

However, they have only met this target around 58 per cent of the time in the period from November 2014 to April 2015.

In a statement to the Standard, the LAS said: "From the information given us, the patient was concious and alert and had no immediately life-threatening injuries. We will work with him to review the case and are sorry if we have contributed to an already very distressing experience."

[mistermack]

I see no link. Worthless post.