Another Mopping Up Operation [Jonah Goldberg]
Yesterday, Mark Steyn wrote:
Basic hygiene accounts for a big chunk of physical well-being, but it's one of the first things to fall by the wayside in socialized systems, which is why they become hotbeds of C Difficile, MRSA, and the like. From the Daily Mail:
Hospital Patient So Shocked At Dirty Ward She Climbed Out Of Bed To Clean It Herself
Well, it seems there's more work to be done. From the BBC:
>>> Maggot infestation hunt continues
A search for the source of a maggot infestation at the Royal Children's Hospital in Aberdeen will continue over the weekend.
The discovery has caused the closure of three operating theatres, and postponements of procedures.<<<
And another mopping up operation... [Mark Steyn]
Jonah, you're missing the point. Those maggots are part of the treatment:
The treatment for the cancer appeared to be working, but the bedsore continued to get worse despite attempts to treat it with "maggot therapy" in which maggots are used to clean out the wound.
That's not a bug, it's a... No, wait: It's a bug and a feature! The maggot is apparently the leech of 21st century government health care. But, as with everything else, there weren't enough of them. This is the story of a decades-long cancer survivor who survived the cancer but died of an NHS bedsore:
>>>During four weeks of what her family describe as "torture" in a bed in East Surrey Hospital, the sore resulted in a fatal blood infection and she died on October 27.
Her son Adrian Goddard, who lives in the US, said: "She survived cancer for 40 years, then died from a bedsore.
"It is just beyond belief that they could let a bedsore develop to the point where it actually kills someone from septicaemia."
He said the nurses seemed largely unconcerned by the growing size of the sore and his mother's increasing pain...
"The level of crisis that attracts their attention has to be very high for them to put down their biscuits."<<<
When we quote stories like these at NRO, we get a lot of e-mail saying these are just "anecdotes". And yes, if you look on yourself as being part of a government health system of millions of people, getting a bedsore and dying in hideous pain is no big deal in the scheme of things. But I look on myself as being part of the Mark Steyn health system. So if I get a bedsore and die, as far as I'm concerned, that's a 100% systemic failure. The difference between government health care and a private system is that, under the latter, you're free to say, "This dump's filthy. I'm going to the state-of-the-art joint five miles up the road." You may have to get out your checkbook, but ultimately the decisions are yours.
In a government system, the decisions are the bureaucrats', and that's that. My father is currently ill, and the health "system" is doing its best to ensure it's fatal. When an ambulance has to be called, they take him to a different hospital according to the determinations of the bed-availability bureaucrats and which one hasn't had to be quarantined for an infection outbreak. At the first hospital, he picked up C Difficile. At the second, MRSA. At the third, like the lady above, he got septicaemia. He's lying there now, enjoying the socialized healthcare jackpot - C Diff, MRSA, septicaemia. None of these ailments are what he went in to be treated for. They were given to him by the medical system.
The Corner on National Review Online (5 July 2009)
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