Brit NHS "Free Healthcare for All" lie.

[Hermit]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 32223.html

[Seth]

I see no link. Worthless post.

Worthless response. Do your own homework, like Hermit did. It ain't rocket surgery.

[NineBerry]

The information missing from the report is the following: Did he call 111 and what was their response? And was the leg actually broken?

999 is only for life-threatening situations. Calling it because of a broken leg is unethical because it means clogging up resources meant to save people's life. If you are out in the street with a broken leg, call 111 and they will certainly arrange some transport to a hospital.

[NineBerry]

On the other hand (eh leg), the NHS website says to call 999

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/broken-leg ... ction.aspx

[Seth]

The information missing from the report is the following: Did he call 111 and what was their response? And was the leg actually broken?

999 is only for life-threatening situations. Calling it because of a broken leg is unethical because it means clogging up resources meant to save people's life. If you are out in the street with a broken leg, call 111 and they will certainly arrange some transport to a hospital.

If you think a broken leg cannot be a life-threatening emergency, you know nothing about emergency medicine.

"Broken leg" could be a fractured femur with a torn artery bleeding internally that can kill you in ten minutes. Or, it could be an open fracture with a torn artery. Or it could be a closed fracture with complications that, if handled incorrectly, could result in permanent damage to nerves, blood vessels, muscles and even the potential for amputation.

Any jackass idiot call taker who presumes to diagnose the severity of an injury of ANY KIND based on what a victim or bystander says on the phone and refuse service based on that diagnosis has absolutely no business being in emergency services.

It was unconscionable neglect of duty and dereliction and heads should roll for it, including those who supervise the call takers, those who trained them to do such a manifestly stupid thing, and those in charge who approved such policies. Not one of them should have a job tomorrow.

[mistermack]

What the extract doesn't say is what was said over the phone.

Was the guy pissed out of his head? Did he describe his injury clearly? Did he know his leg was broken?

It doesn't look like it, because the police took him home, not to hospital, which they would have done, if it looked like he needed it.
Or they would definitely have ordered an ambulance themselves, if they thought his leg was broken. To cover their own backs.

Forty years ago, I broke my ankle quite badly. I was on my way out to the pub. I carried on out, I thought it was sprained.
I didn't go to the hospital till the pubs closed, and then, only as a precaution, on the off-chance that it was fractured.
I've still got a pin going through the bones of my ankle. And I was sober when it happened.

So without the details of what was said, how, and by whom, it's a meaningless article.
Just some journalist making a story out of nothing.

[Seth]

What the extract doesn't say is what was said over the phone.

Was the guy pissed out of his head? Did he describe his injury clearly? Did he know his leg was broken?

It doesn't look like it, because the police took him home, not to hospital, which they would have done, if it looked like he needed it.
Or they would definitely have ordered an ambulance themselves, if they thought his leg was broken. To cover their own backs.

Forty years ago, I broke my ankle quite badly. I was on my way out to the pub. I carried on out, I thought it was sprained.
I didn't go to the hospital till the pubs closed, and then, only as a precaution, on the off-chance that it was fractured.
I've still got a pin going through the bones of my ankle. And I was sober when it happened.

So without the details of what was said, how, and by whom, it's a meaningless article.
Just some journalist making a story out of nothing.

Doesn't matter. The first rule of emergency dispatch is that you never make assumptions about the gravity of the injury, you respond as if it's life threatening until a professional medic arrives and decides otherwise. Had I made such an assumption once, the victim would now be dead. His wife called and said he'd cut his arm on a broken window. I could have simply dispatched units on a non-emergency basis or suggested she go to the ER herself. Turns out she was foreign-born and didn't understand that her husband had severed his brachial artery and was bleeding out. She was going to put coffee grounds on the wound, but because I inquired as to the amount of blood and how it was flowing I determined that it was an arterial bleed and dispatched it as a tier 1 emergency. One of our officers responded quickly enough to apply direct pressure, which the wife was too panicked and confused to do, and save the man's life.

The very idea that a dispatcher would presume to dismiss a victim as being unworthy of an emergent response is anathema to proper emergency services protocol and indicates a serious problem with the system, which is obviously being destroyed by socialized medicine and it's inevitable focus on cost-cutting.

[PsychoSerenity]

The police not taking him to the hospital is a bit odd. Unless of course his injuries were minimal. A slight fracture that you can still walk on is not worth diverting an ambulance from someone having a heart attack.

And it is of course also worth noting that under Tory rule the London Ambulance Service is massively underfunded and constantly has to contract out its emergency ambulance services to private companies, causing all sorts of havoc.

[mistermack]

It seems to me very likely that the guy was well drunk, and probably didn't make much sense on the phone. Muggers target drunks, they are easy meat.

If he was as bad as they are making out, the police wouldn't have moved him, they wouldn't take the chance. They would have organised an ambulance.

The fact that they got him up and drove him home very strongly suggests to me that he was too drunk to function. Or at the minimum, that his injuries were not all that obvious.
If the police didn't realise his leg was broken, how is someone on the phone supposed to know?

At least they didn't demand to know his insurance status.

[Seth]

At least they didn't demand to know his insurance status.

Fallacious implication. It is a violation of both state and federal law for any emergency responder, from the scene to the ER, to deny emergency life-saving care based on a person's ability to pay or the existence of health care insurance.

[mistermack]

At least they didn't demand to know his insurance status.

Fallacious implication. It is a violation of both state and federal law for any emergency responder, from the scene to the ER, to deny emergency life-saving care based on a person's ability to pay or the existence of health care insurance.

Irrelevant, as this man wasn't an emergency, as judged by the police who drove him home.
And certainly didn't seem to need life-saving care, on the same basis.

I certainly would concede that the US health system scores highly on responsiveness in general.
That's the only facet that they do score well in. The reason is obvious. The quicker you respond, the quicker the money starts coming in. After that, the US ratings are poor.

How they would rate on responsiveness, to UNINSURED cases, is a much different matter.

[JimC]

All I can add is that, with our health system, a few years back I had emergency surgery to repair a detached retina, and didn't have to pay a cent, other than a few dollars for some post-surgery eyedrops...

[Seth]

At least they didn't demand to know his insurance status.

Fallacious implication. It is a violation of both state and federal law for any emergency responder, from the scene to the ER, to deny emergency life-saving care based on a person's ability to pay or the existence of health care insurance.

Irrelevant, as this man wasn't an emergency, as judged by the police who drove him home.
And certainly didn't seem to need life-saving care, on the same basis.

I certainly would concede that the US health system scores highly on responsiveness in general.
That's the only facet that they do score well in. The reason is obvious. The quicker you respond, the quicker the money starts coming in. After that, the US ratings are poor.

How they would rate on responsiveness, to UNINSURED cases, is a much different matter.

Not at all. The entire point is that nobody in emergency medical response services, from EMT's to Paramedics to Flight and Critical Care nurses to emergency physicians EVER ASKS about a patient's financial situation. Ever. Particularly not before or as a condition of rendering emergency care. It is, in fact, a violation of federal law for any care provider to do so if they work for any facility that gets even a dime of money from the public purse. "No questions asked" emergency care is the standard here and has been for a very long time.

Now it is true that the financial staff of a hospital and the billing department of the ambulance service are no slackers when it comes to inquiring about how you plan to pay for the service, but if you can't answer or won't, they will simply go away and you will continue to get medical care until you are able to be safely discharged.

Eventually the bills will come, but that's a different matter entirely. Why shouldn't they? You consumed a valuable service so you owe what it costs to provide it, plus profit, because there's no such thing as a free lunch. Under the NHS, the same bill comes due, but instead of getting sent to the particular patient who incurred it, it gets divided up and sent to everybody else, who are expected to pay for it even though they did not incur the debt.

[Seth]

At least they didn't demand to know his insurance status.

Fallacious implication. It is a violation of both state and federal law for any emergency responder, from the scene to the ER, to deny emergency life-saving care based on a person's ability to pay or the existence of health care insurance.

Irrelevant, as this man wasn't an emergency, as judged by the police who drove him home.

Neither police officers, EMTs, Paramedics, RNs, or LPNs are legally qualified to "judge" whether a medical complaint is valid. I'd be willing to bet that even in the UK the police are NOT authorized to make medical decisions denying or even delaying treatment to anyone with an injury or medical complaint. I know for a fact that they are not so authorized here in the US, anywhere.

And certainly didn't seem to need life-saving care, on the same basis.

If he had been taken home and suffered a pulmonary embolisim due to bone-marrow or blood clots traveling from the injury to his lungs or heart, and he'd died or suffered some other permanent injury the officers who took him home would be legally liable.

I had a fellow officer who stepped off a curb and twisted his ankle rather badly. He refused medical care and simply went home. Four hours later he was at death's door in the ER with...wait for it...a blood clot in his lung that very nearly killed him. It took him months to recover and he was on all sorts of blood thinners to prevent another clot long after that.

The same thing happened a couple of years ago to my sister, who slipped and fell on the stairs and bruised her backside quite badly. A week or so after the fall, a clot lodged in her lung and nearly killed her.

And that is why nobody but a physician can examine and discharge an emergency medical patient.

[mistermack]

All your examples show, is that Americans are regularly refusing treatment, because of the potential cost involved. Something I was already well aware of.

Over here, that happens with dogs and cats. In the USA, it's people too.

My own cousins in the US are paying for healthcare for one of their number, after his insurance stopped paying. He had perfectly good insurance, and a job. He lost his job, and insurance cover, due to illness.
Now they all chip in to pay cash for his treatment.

How very third world.