Introduction:
Even if the Obamacare system of socialized medicine eventually works as intended, which will never happen, it will look a lot like the system already in place in England.  And how is England's system working?  Not too great.

Note:  The newest material is now at the top of the page, now that I've turned it around to match the internet custom.

Billions more blown away on woke NHS non-jobs.  Here are just a few from the most recent list of NHS vacancies:  The Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust are looking for an Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Co-ordinator on £46,148 to £52,809 a year.  The duties of this essential individual include: 'Supporting the Associate Director of Patient and Carer Experience in conceptualising, developing and delivering Equality, Diversity and Inclusion initiatives across all areas of the organisation in relation to both staff members and people accessing services. [...] If you want to be at the centre of DIE action, the British Medical Association are looking for a Senior Policy Advisor — Equality Inclusion and Culture Team, salary £53,032.08 a year. 'The successful candidate will have a portfolio that would cover the protected characteristic of disability but also extend to discrete projects on other characteristics/themes including (but not limited to): race, religion and belief, bullying and harassment.  They will take forward projects including conducting extensive research, developing policy positions and recommendations, writing briefings, conducting FOIs, consultation responses.'

Transgender men sue NHS over 'half-built' genitalia.  Transgender men have threatened to su the NHS after being left with "half-built" genitalia.  Human rights lawyers are representing patients who have been left with "indeterminate genitalia" and "psychological distress" after their surgery processes were unexpectedly halted.  NHS England had commissioned St Peter's Andrology Centre, a private clinic in north London, to carry out the surgeries but did not renew the contract upon its expiry in March 2020.  It was not until September 2021 that New Victoria Hospital in Kingston was appointed as a replacement provider, creating a backlog that has left many patients facing delays of up to four years, midway through procedures that require multiple operations.  Law firm Leigh Day, working with LGBTQ+ group TransActual, has written to NHS England and St Peter's to demand a formal response before legal action is taken.

The NHS needs less money, not more.  Across the NHS, celebrations for Black History Month have just reached a crescendo.  At Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust in the West Midlands this year's theme was "Reclaiming Narratives".  According to the trust's website, the aim was to "correct historical inaccuracies, showcase success stories, and highlight the full complexity of black heritage."  To that end, staff were encouraged to read e-books about black culture while patients and visitors browsed market stalls offering "ethnic jewellery, hair and beauty products".  At one point, there was a "Caribbean vibe" with music from a famous steel pan drummer called the Mighty Jamma.  Angela Cope, the trust's equality, diversity and inclusion manager, believes all this is vital to "educate people" and "create a more respectful and anti-racist society".  Really?  Or would patients prefer her hospital to focus on making sick people better?  As Chancellor Rachel Reeves prepares to throw another £20bn at the NHS, the danger is that yet more cash will be squandered on this guff.

The Darzi Review of the NHS.  The Government had asked Lord Darzi, an academic surgeon at Imperial College London, to conduct an 'independent' review of the National Health Service.  In September 2024, his 163-page document was published.  While highlighting some of the major flaws in the NHS — long waiting lists, an increase in the number of avoidable deaths, poor productivity — Darzi's proposed solutions are trite and uninspiring, comprising little more than appeals for additional taxpayer funding and a 'tilt towards technology'.  Clearly, nothing has been learnt from the increasingly evident major deficiencies in the NHS, powerfully illustrated by some of its counterproductive responses to the covid event.  It seems we must brace ourselves for more of the same in the future.

Lives are getting shorter, and medicine is to blame.  [Scroll down]  Drug and alcohol abuse are factors, but not the only reason.  This trend began before the Covid-19 'pandemic'.  According to a 2019 Guardian report, life expectancy stalled in England in 2013 and had flat-lined since.  Sir Michael Marmot, professor of epidemiology at University College London, believed that government 'austerity' policy was to blame.  'I am worried that we are heading along the same route as the US,' he said.  'We should be investing significantly in health and social care like the rest of Europe.'  So much for the NHS being the envy of the world.  Instead of improving the health of British citizens, it seems that the more money is thrown at the NHS — £185billion last year — the poorer the outcomes.

Will NHS staff be able to veto Christian prayers during assisted suicides?  If assisted suicide becomes legal in the UK, would NHS staff have a right to veto Christian prayers being said when the lethal injections are administered?  The question may seem far-fetched, but it is raised by the experience of writer Matthew Hall who witnessed the recent death of his late aunt in Canada.  In Canada, assisted suicide has been legal since 2016 and is officially termed Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD).  Hall wrote about his experience in The Spectator magazine on September 21 and it makes for fascinating reading.  His aunt was 72 and in the early stages of motor neurone disease.  She made the decision earlier this year to undergo MAiD against the wishes of her family.  Hall wrote: "My aunt had wanted me with her at the end.  She knew that I am a practising Christian (there is nothing like being brought up in the 1980s by self-proclaimed 'radical vegans' to drive you into the arms of the church) and I sensed that deep-down she was conflicted about religion — that beneath all the crystals and dream-catchers there was still a remnant of the faith that as a teenage art student in late-1960s London she had dismissed as stuffy and old-fashioned."

Woman died from cancer after two-year wait for NHS to contact her.  A woman died from cancer after waiting two years for the NHS to call or email her with her ultrasound scan results, a coroner has ruled.  Despite an urgent referral being made, Sara Grinnell endured a 24-month wait before her disease was detected because she never received the hospital's letters, an inquest heard.  By the time she was finally seen, it was too late and her only available treatment was end-of-life care.  South Wales coroner Patricia Morgan has now written to the NHS criticising the health service for its "missed opportunity" and "extensive delays" in Mrs Grinnell's tragic case.

The Denationalisation of Healthcare.  Until very recently, Britain's National Health Service used to be beyond argument.  The reverence for the health service often precluded anything resembling a rational discussion around it: the social taboos were simply too strong.  Yet over the past two years or so, this has begun to change.  We can now quite regularly find articles in the mainstream media which openly criticise the NHS, and point to better alternatives.  In particular, advocacy of Social Health Insurance (SHI) systems has become part of the mainstream debate.  SHI systems are market-based, competitive and largely non-state systems, in which the role of the state is not to run healthcare facilities, but to insure universal access.  In terms of clinical outcomes, these systems tend to outperform the NHS, and they have done so for as long as we have data.  This is not simply the result of better funding.  While examples of a wholesale switch from an NHS-type system to an SHI-type system are rare, they do exist.

The NHS: Where does all the money go?  The UK Prime Minister says there can be no extra NHS funding without reform.  At the same time, Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, says the Department of Health and Social Care policy is that the NHS is broken.  So, if there is no new money and the system is broken, some funds must be reallocated to fix the problems.  But where does all the money currently go?  First, we need to understand the structure of the NHS and its key organisations.  The House of Commons Library has a handy research briefing that provides an overview of funding and accountability arrangements within the NHS in England.

Healthy 27-year-old man died after NHS wrongly gave him wrong Covid jab.  A man died after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine due to a mix-up with his medical records, that incorrectly listed him as living with his 'at risk' parents.  Jack Last, 27, an engineer from Stowmarket in Suffolk, began experiencing headaches after his jab on March 30, 2021, and died just three weeks later on April 20. In a cruel twist of fate, government health advisors recommended people under 30 to opt for alternative vaccines a mere week after Jack was vaccinated, due to concerns over rare but fatal brain blood clots.

Girl, eight, died of sepsis after being sent home 'because the hospital was too full'.  An eight-year-old girl died of sepsis hours after she was sent home twice by a GP who advised her mum to give her fluids and ibuprofen — because the hospital was allegedly too full.  Mia Glynn was taken to a GP surgery twice in four hours and despite showing symptoms of Group Strep A her parents were told to take her home.  On the second appointment, the youngster was sent away with antibiotics after being told a hospital was full and they would be waiting in a corridor.

Alarming graphs show catastrophic NHS failures.  The nightmarish state of the NHS has been revealed in a series of shocking charts crafted by MailOnline, as the Prime Minister warns the service must 'reform or die'.  Official data paints a grim picture of the service millions of Brits rely on for both emergency care and routine treatments — as well as checks that ward off long-term disease.  The fascinating analysis follows a [scathing] report by Lord Darzi, a pioneering surgeon and former Labour health minister, which concluded the NHS is in a 'critical condition'.

NHS must reform or die, Starmer to say after major report.  "Ballooning" NHS waiting times and delays getting vital treatment in A&E and cancer care is harming health and costing lives, according to a critical government-commissioned report on the service in England.  People have "every right to be angry," Sir Keir Starmer will warn on Thursday, adding the health service must "reform or die".  Health Secretary Wes Streeting vowed to "turn the NHS around" after the review found it is still struggling from the effects of the pandemic, weakened by under-investment and missing key targets for treatment.  But the Conservatives said the government needed to turn "rhetoric to action" after scrapping its plans to reform social care and build new hospitals.

NHS is 'broken' — 800,000 children are stuck on long waiting lists for treatment.  More than 800,000 children are stuck on lengthy NHS hospital waiting lists, it was revealed today as the Prime Minister says the health service has been left 'broken' in an 'unforgivable' way.  The Prime Minister made the claim in an interview today ahead of the publication of a review into how youngsters are treated.  A review by eminent surgeon and independent peer Lord Darzi due to be published on Thursday is expected to highlight how children are being let down by the health service.

Man with breathing difficulties was found dead at home after GP surgery told patients to email rather than phone.  A senior coroner has written a warning to the government over GP surgeries asking patients to email in rather than call after a man died when staff ignored him.  Allan Hamilton was struggling to breath when he emailed for help on November 14, having been told not to ring for assistance on previous visits to his GP.  But his email was ignored for three days and he was found dead in his home on 19 November, from pneumonia and heart disease.

The Sorry State of the NHS.  It is often difficult to comprehend just how much of the current mainstream indoctrination has worked its way into various systems unchecked and unopposed, since Labour came to power even though it's only been a few weeks.  Having been on holiday, I sat at my NHS desk, ready to spend two days replying to the hundreds of emails I had received despite the out of office sign being on.  The first things I saw made me sit back in amazement!  There was a generic email from NHS England saying that if anyone had suffered anxiety due to the riots, they could seek help from the staff support system.  And there was another one saying that all minority staff who felt threatened by what had happened were being given permission to work solely from home.  There was also a person posting on the local blog asking people to join him in cancelling their X accounts due to, in his opinion, Elon Musk being an irresponsible bigot and trying to cause riots and promote fascism.

Assisted suicide and the NHS are a truly toxic mix.  In the midst of the summer recess, it may seem perverse to look ahead to the legislative agenda for the next parliamentary session.  However, as Labour's options for governing appear increasingly constrained by the tight public finances, it seems ever more likely that assisted suicide will be a defining policy.  It is one of those classic issues where initial, uncomplicated polling suggests widespread support.  However, the more people end up learning about it, and the practicalities of how it might work, the less enthusiastic they become.  A new poll has revealed that, though the public generally favours assisted suicide, a plurality fear that it might incentivise doctors to encourage patients to take their lives to ease pressures on the NHS.

NHS staff [have been] told to ask men if they are pregnant before X-rays.  NHS X-ray operators have been told to ask men if they are pregnant before conducting scans, The Telegraph can reveal.  Radiographers at multiple hospitals have been told they must check whether all patients aged 12 to 55 are pregnant, regardless of their sex, as part of inclusivity guidance.  The guidance was written after an incident in which a trans man who was unknowingly pregnant had a CT scan, and tells staff to be inclusive of transgender, non-binary and intersex patients by not making assumptions about people.

How Women Doctors Destroyed Healthcare in Britain.  All the current problems with the health service in the UK are a result of the deliberate increase in the number of women in medicine.  Inevitably, no one will debate this statement with me.  But nor can they dispute what I am about to tell you.  First, a political decision was taken, half a century ago, to increase the number of female doctors.  Medical schools were told to favour female applicants over male applicants when selecting potential medical students.  Second, many of the female doctors chose to go into general practice because it is easier to work part time as a GP than it is to work part time as a hospital consultant.  Third, female doctors didn't want to do night calls or weekend calls or to work on bank holidays.  They claimed that they had babies and children to care for and that they would not be safe if they had to make home visits at night.  Fourth, for the same reason of safety, female doctors wanted to stop doing home visits.  Fifth, with more female doctors in general practice (many of them working part time) there weren't enough male doctors to do all the night calls and weekend calls.  And so GPs stopped doing out of hours calls and started to work the same sort of hours as librarians. (Actually, these days the average GP works 24 hours a week — which is considerably less than most librarians.)

NHS waiting lists don't mention lockdown!  A child could grasp the fact that if you stop treating ill patients, as we did in March 2020, an explosion in the NHS waiting list is the only possible outcome.  Looking at the number of NHS patients waiting for 52 weeks or more, you can very easily see this metric started from zero and then immediately exploded as soon as lockdowns started.

The Green Party is Terrifying.  Is the Green party the most controversial force in British politics?  It's certainly giving Reform a run for its money. [...] Now there's the backlash to their scandalous maternity policy.  In the wake of the Ockenden Review and the Birth Trauma Inquiry, it has emerged the Greens have been promoting 'natural' deliveries and promising to reduce Caesarean sections.  Yet it was precisely this mindset — that intervention ought to be delayed, despite the risks to patient safety — that led to the tragic deaths of 300 babies and 12 mothers at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital Trust.  The language of 'normal' or 'natural' births was formally dropped by the Royal College of Midwives in 2017, so why is the Green party still deploying it?  Perhaps it shouldn't surprise us that the Greens want childbirth to become a non-medical event:  the entire movement is hostile towards human progress, modernity and industrialisation.

NHS chiefs face legal action after 26 female nurses protested being forced to share women's changing room with a transgender colleague.  NHS chiefs are facing landmark legal action after 26 female hospital nurses protested about being forced to share a women's changing room with a transgender colleague who is biologically male.  The women complained that the transgender nurse — who has not had gender reassignment surgery — had taken a 'keen interest' in female staff when they were getting undressed.  They say they have found the situation 'intimidating and upsetting'.  In a formal complaint, the nurses say they were stunned after the 'sexually active' trans nurse admitted to trying for a baby with a female partner and had stopped taking female hormones.  But a human resources manager at the hospital trust allegedly said that the female nurses need to 'be more inclusive', 'broaden their mindset' and 'be educated and attend training'.

Nurses Suing NHS Trust After Being Forced to Share Women's Changing Room With Biological Male.  NHS chiefs are facing landmark legal action after 26 female hospital nurses protested about being forced to share a women's changing room with a transgender colleague who is biologically male.

Our Federal Government Needs an Intervention.  Allison Pearson has an important article in the Telegraph about the British National Health System (NHS).  People in Britian are dying of treatable conditions because the NHS will not provide quality care in a timely fashion.  As one doctor complained: "The NHS is run by managers for the benefit of managers."  It has shifted from doctors serving patients to the bureaucracy serving itself — internally, rather than externally, focused.  The NHS is a chilling illustration of where our federal government is headed.

'A chilling cover-up' — nine key findings from the infected blood inquiry.  The final infected blood inquiry report lays bare how tens of thousands of lives were destroyed by the use of infected blood products on the NHS between 1970 and 1998.  Sir Brian Langstaff's inquiry concluded that this was a "calamity" which "could and should" have been avoided.  His report highlights a culture of defensiveness and cover-ups at the heart of the British state, a familiar theme of other modern scandals, from the Hillsborough disaster to recent NHS maternity care catastrophes.  Successive governments were "more concerned about reputational damage than openness and honesty", the report concluded.  [Paywall.]

Ken Clarke must lose peerage over infected blood, say victims.  Lord Clarke is facing calls to be stripped of his peerage after the Infected Blood Inquiry concluded he had misled the public in an "indefensible" way over the risks from transfusions.  The former health secretary was condemned by Sir Brian Langstaff, the inquiry chairman, for claiming in 1983 that there was "no conclusive proof" that Aids could be spread through blood.  He was also upbraided for claiming campaigners only criticised him because he was a "celebrity".  More than 3,000 people have died after receiving blood transfusions and blood products infected with HIV and hepatitis — deaths that Sir Brian said could largely have been avoided.  Sir Brian said that by 1982 there was evidence that infections were occurring through imported blood products, meaning Lord Clarke's claims "gave false assurances, lacked candour" and were misleading.

The NHS is killing us — and gradually bankrupting the nation while it does so.  Jeremy Hunt is right about one thing:  if you think you're overtaxed by the Tories, it's guaranteed to be even worse under Labour.  In a speech on Friday, the Chancellor claimed that Keir Starmer would put up taxes "as sure as night follows day" to fund his big spending pledges.  Arguing that the Tories were forced to dig deeper into taxpayers' pockets to pay for the furlough scheme, the energy price guarantee and billions of pounds of cost of living support, Hunt claimed: "Conservatives recognise that while those tax rises may have been necessary, they should not be permanent.  Labour do not." [...] But beyond all the flip-flopping and flim-flam, there's a single reason why Labour will never be able to cut taxes and is more likely to raise them.  It's not the party's multibillion-pound green prosperity plan or even its costly New Deal for Working People, designed to keep its public sector union paymasters happy.  No, the real reason Starmer will never be able to bring down the tax bill is the NHS — revered as a religion in Labour circles.

The NHS cares more about PR than patients.  The Mafia-like NHS management style continues to endanger countless patients.  Organisational and personal reputations are far too often placed far ahead of good practice and safe patient care by the use of skilled but expensive PR.  As has been reported this week, whistleblowers — those who highlight errors and problems — are treated like criminals.  They are hounded and bullied out of jobs, with their financial and professional futures ruined by bureaucrats who rarely have any actual medical experience.  Defusing, and then covering up the story, becomes the priority instead of addressing the root cause.  This stop-gap approach saves the day in most cases but eventually disasters leak out.  Regulatory bodies such as the General Medical Council (GMC) for doctors and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) are weaponised to silence doctors and nurses, with so-called heretics flogged in front of the baying mob.  This sets an extremely effective deterrent.

NHS bosses destroy careers of whistleblowers who stand up to protect patients' lives.  NHS managers are destroying the careers of whistleblowers who raise concerns about patient safety, a group of medics warns.  More than 50 doctors and nurses have told The Telegraph they have been targeted after raising concerns about upwards of 170 patient deaths and nearly 700 cases of poor care.  One consultant described it as "the biggest scandal within our country" and said the true number of avoidable deaths was "astronomical".  Instead of trying to fix the problems, the whistleblowers claim NHS bosses are spending millions of pounds of taxpayers' money hiring law firms and private eyes to investigate them instead, leading many medics to quit the profession in despair.  In one case, the NHS spent more than £4 million on legal action against a single whistleblower, which included £3.2 million in compensation.

Pharmaceutical giants knowingly sold HIV-infected treatment to NHS.  Pharmaceutical companies knowingly sold a treatment infected with HIV to the NHS, The Telegraph can reveal.  Internal documents from American pharmaceutical companies show they knew a "wonder drug" made from human plasma could transmit HIV to patients, but they sold it regardless.  Some 1,250 people in the UK contracted HIV in the 70s and 80s from Factor VIII, a treatment for the bleeding disorder haemophilia.  Up to 5,000 more also contracted hepatitis C.  The Infected Blood Inquiry will report later this month on mistakes that allowed Factor VIII contaminated with HIV and hepatitis C to be imported into the UK and prescribed to patients on the NHS.

Number of NHS patients with serious heart problems forced to wait 18 weeks for care soars five-fold.  NHS waiting lists for patients battling serious heart problems have soared five-fold in the wake of the pandemic, grim figures show.  More than 163,000 patients in England have endured treatment delays of at least 18 weeks.  This is up on the 32,000 in February 2020 — the month before Covid rocked Britain — and double the 87,000 in February 2022.

The Cass Review is a devastating blow to trans ideology.  In 2020, the NHS commissioned Dr Hilary Cass, a leading paediatrician, to review its gender services for children and young people.  Today, four years on, her eagerly anticipated findings have been published.  At its core, the Cass Review severely criticises the NHS's approach to 'gender confused' children, and reaffirms the principle of evidence-based practice in medicine.  It warns that the medical pathway is unsuitable for most young people with gender issues.  And it states that clinicians should take extreme care before allowing anyone under the age of 25 to take pharmaceutical steps to 'transition' to look like the opposite sex.  Cass notes that many young patients referred to gender-identity services are often dealing with many other issues, such as trauma, neglect and abuse.  Furthermore, she points out that there is no 'good evidence' available on the long-term outcomes of the treatments that have been given to children.  In particular, she slams the international guidelines for transitioning, developed by the World Professional Association of Transgender Healthcare (WPATH), criticising them for their lack of 'developmental rigour'.

The Cass report and the unforgivable puberty blockers scandal.  Children who identify as transgender have been let down badly by an NHS that succumbed to an activist lobby.  That is the obvious conclusion to make after Dr Hilary Cass published her final report this morning as part of the Independent Review of Gender Identity Services for Children and Young People.  In her report, Cass suggests that there is a serious lack of evidence about the long-term impact puberty blockers and other cross-sex hormones are having on children.  While the original rationale for puberty blockers was to give children 'time to think' about transitioning, the report dismantles this argument, pointing out that the 'vast majority' of children move from puberty blockers to cross-sex hormones, and:  'there is no evidence that puberty blockers buy time to think, and some concern that they may change the trajectory of psychosexual and gender identity development.'

Why was gender ideology allowed to run amok for so long?  Just like that, a trickle becomes a flood.  After years of gender-critical voices being dismissed or ignored by mainstream media, they can be dismissed and ignored no longer.  The landmark Cass Review into gender-identity services in England, published today, has laid bare the scandal of the NHS's treatment of 'gender confused' kids.  There was never any evidence for subjecting troubled, often gay, often autistic, youngsters to life-altering hormones, drugs and treatments.  But clinicians did it anyway, in thrall as they were to gender ideology.  The review is on the front page of the newspapers today.  The BBC is platforming trans-sceptical experts — and not just so they can be hissed at live on air.  Keir Starmer's ever-opportunistic Labour Party is saying it agrees with everything in the report.

NHS's entire gender treatment model for children is demolished in bombshell report.  Children given NHS transgender treatment have been set on a path of irreversible change despite scant medical data, a report has concluded.  NHS gender identity services for children and young people have been based on 'remarkably weak evidence', the independent review by leading paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass warned.  Her study, commissioned nearly four years ago, makes 32 recommendations to overhaul NHS trans services to improve the care that children receive.

The NHS is killing us — it is an enemy of Britain.  A neighbour went to A&E recently to get a nasty burn treated.  "Honestly, it was like the Third World," a shocked Kate reported.  So many people were sitting on the floor, she said, that traversing the human tide to get to the reception desk was almost impossible.  "At one point, a nurse shouted that anyone who was sitting on a chair who was merely accompanying a patient should stand up.  When they stood up, they were told to vacate their chairs immediately, but there was literally nowhere for them to even stand."  People who couldn't make it through the fray to the toilets threw up where they were.  The stench was awful.  Throughout that same night, 13 ambulances carrying patients were parked outside the biggest hospital in the east of England.  A&E had no capacity to admit them.  Kate waited 12 hours before she finally spoke to someone medical (brusque, not kind).  Apart from the skein of skin falling off her scalded hand, she was fit enough to endure the hellish conditions, but she saw older people give up and leave A&E.

NHS bosses ordered to reveal fate of 9,000 young transgender Tavistock patients.  The NHS must reveal the fate of 9,000 transgender young people treated by the controversial Tavistock clinic, the Health Secretary has said in the wake of the Cass review.  The landmark report published on Wednesday found adult gender clinics had refused to disclose whether transgender people who started their treatment as children later changed their minds about transitioning, or went on to suffer serious mental health problems.  Victoria Atkins, the Health Secretary, met Amanda Pritchard, the chief executive of NHS England, on Wednesday to tell her "nothing less than full co-operation by those clinics in the research is acceptable".  Writing in The Telegraph, Ms Atkins says she has had enough of "a culture of secrecy and ideology over evidence and safety".  She goes on:  "We simply do not know the lifelong impact of these medical interventions on young minds and bodies to be clear that they are safe."

The NHS has lost its way, and patients are paying the price.  Exacting standards are required across healthcare, which requires delivery in the right way at the right time to those who matter most.  Clot-busting treatments given in the first hour — the 'golden hour' — after a heart attack saves lives.  However, their effectiveness drops rapidly if treatment is delayed.  As little as a four-week delay in cancer treatment is associated with an increase in mortality of 8 percent across seven cancers.  In the latest story to hit the headlines, more than 250 patients a week might be dying unnecessarily due to long waits in A&E in England.  However, these are only a small portion of the dire problems that have accrued in the NHS.  In 2023, Cancer waiting times were the worst on record in England.  While NHS waiting lists in England rose to a record NHS 7.75m in 2023, the Times reports more than 11 million patients are in need of follow-up hospital care, as they are on "hidden" NHS waiting lists.  The Telegraph now reports that the NHS waiting list could be two million longer than thought, based on ONS survey data that estimates 9.7 million are waiting for an appointment.  The number waiting more than a year could be nearly 1.35 million.

UK Health Service Sees Surge in Autism, ADHD Since Pandemic.  Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is suffering a fivefold surge in people seeking autism assessments since the Wuhan virus pandemic and shortages of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) medications.  Research by the Nuffield Trust put the number of people waiting for an autism diagnosis from the socialized healthcare provider in December 2023 at 172,000.  This compares to 32,320 in December 2019, before the onset of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns and vaccine rollouts.

Is the NHS waiting list even bigger than what they're telling us?  The NHS waiting list could be 3 million people longer than previously thought — with many waiting more than a year, an official report reveals.  The Office for National Statistics said its survey of 90,000 adults in England found 21 percent were waiting for an NHS appointment, including an operation or scan.  This means that around 9.7 million people — more than one in five — are waiting when the results are extrapolated to the whole population.

More than 250 needless deaths occur each week due to agonising waits in A&E, study suggests.  Soaring waits in A&E for hospital beds led to more than 250 needless deaths a week in England last year, a study suggests.  More than a million patients waited 12 hours or more for a bed after a decision had been made to admit them.  The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) estimates one in 72 of those patients will have died because they were left in A&E waiting rooms or on trolleys before a place on a ward became available.

It's time to correct the foundational lie of the NHS.  Admiration of the NHS is not as universal as it once was.  Yet, even though more than seven million people are waiting for treatment — many of them in pain and some in mortal danger — the British public is reluctant to give up on the concept.  One reason is that they have been sold a lie.  In the popular mind, there was no healthcare prior to the NHS.  It is as if 1948 was Year Zero.  Perhaps, they might imagine, the rich managed to get to see a doctor but the working class, let alone the poor, were left to suffer and die at home or in the gutter.  Then along came the NHS.  Hospitals sprung up and everyone was cared for.  The textbooks in our schools don't attempt to tell any other story.  Every development in the welfare state is treated as progress and the NHS above all the rest.  The truth is very different.  The first British hospital, St Bartholomew's in London, was founded in 1123.  St Thomas's was founded at an uncertain date in the twelfth century.  The eighteenth century brought a rush of hospital-building.  In less than three decades, starting in 1720, five new general hospitals were created in London:  the Westminster, St George's, The London Hospital, the Middlesex Infirmary and Guy's.

Scotland's £200,000-a-year NHS chief is now the government's highest-paid civil servant.  The head of the country's struggling NHS has been given a rise — making her the Scottish Government's first civil servant to be paid more than £200,000 a year.  Caroline Lamb, who trained as an accountant, now earns more than six times as much as a newly qualified nurse.  Since she took over as its chief executive in 2021, the performance of Scotland's NHS has repeatedly come under fire — with record numbers of patients waiting for treatment as well as record delays in A&E departments.

Satisfaction With NHS Sinks to Lowest Level on Record.  Public satisfaction with the NHS has plummeted to the lowest level on record, according to Britain's longest-running survey.  Findings of the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey 2023 suggest less than a quarter, or 24 percent, of the British public are satisfied with the health service.  It's four percentage points down from the rate in 2022, 29 points down since 2020, and the lowest level since the survey began in 1983.

Britain's NHS will no longer prescribe puberty blockers to children.  You know, we could learn something from the Brits, who live a whole two years or so ahead of us as far as social trends go.  Britain's NHS has just taken puberty blockers off the table for children suffering from gender dysphoria, and will now actually perform the science necessary to show what kind of impact the drugs actually have on the young body (I'll give you a hint:  It's not good).  [Tweet]

More than one in three public sector staff now works for NHS.  More than a third of public sector workers are employed by the NHS after the number of staff in the health service surged above 2 million for the first time.  It now accounts for one in three of the 6 million people employed in the public sector, according to the Office for National Statistics, with a further 208,000 employed in other state-funded health and social work.  The disclosure comes as Jeremy Hunt prepares to plump an additional £6bn into NHS spending.  Mr Hunt last week announced plans to boost productivity and cut waiting lists in the NHS.  In his Budget, the Chancellor said £3.4bn would be set aside "to modernise NHS IT systems so they're as good as the best in the world".  He also said an extra £2.5bn would "help the NHS meet pressures in the coming year".

Influential trans health doctors and activists have secretly shaped NHS policies for more than a decade.  Influential transgender health doctors and activists successfully helped shape NHS policies for more than a decade, it can be revealed.  Standards of Care documents, produced by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, have been used as a basis for guidance to medical practitioners across the NHS.  Such was the level of WPATH's influence it saw a director of the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust tell a committee of MPs its treatment protocols were based on the organisation's guidelines.

The NHS treats us like paupers and expects us to be grateful.  [Scroll down]  But it is a rare Conservative politician who will express any doubts about the health service and Jeremy Hunt certainly is not one of them.  He has written a whole book about the NHS and his efforts to reduce avoidable harm and death within it — an astonishing 150 avoidable deaths every week.  As he rightly says, solutions to this problem do exist — better accountability, better prevention, better technology.  But he shows a touching belief in the ability of ministers and managers to make them happen, despite all the evidence that the problems just repeat and repeat.  In truth, improvements are made despite the NHS system, not because of it.  That's not surprising in this Soviet-style set-up which has no competition, no real incentives, and no consumer power.  If airlines kill their passengers, people stop flying on them, and their staff stop working for them.  But if your local maternity centre kills too many babies, as all too many of them seem to keep on doing, you are stuck with it.

The NHS is our national shame.  It's time to abolish it.  It is rare to hear such nonsense as that which came out of Jeremy Hunt's mouth today.  His words were so extraordinary that they made one wonder whether he said what he did out of sheer cynicism.  Delivering his budget address, the Chancellor told the Commons that "the NHS is, rightly, the biggest reason most of us are proud to be British".  Anyone who has seriously studied the performance of the NHS knows otherwise.  It is among the worst providers of healthcare in the advanced world.  One of the key tests of performance is the proportion of people still alive five years after being diagnosed with cancer.  The European rankings vary over time but consistently, for at least 25 years, those living in Britain have been more likely to die after diagnosis than those living in Belgium, France or other advanced European countries.  Professor Sikora once calculated how many people died here who would not have died in an average European country.  The terrifying figure was 10,000 people in a single year.

British NHS Hospital 'Accidentally' Chops Off 6 People's Limbs in 3 Years..  A British hospital has admitted that it mistakenly performed six amputations in three years, a small fraction of an 'accidental' amputation epidemic occurring at UK hospitals with as many as 105 over three years.  York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust acknowledged the mistakes — the highest number of incidents in any UK hospital — resulting from medical negligence.  The Yorkshire hospital revealed that four of the accidental amputations occurred in 2020, while the remaining two happened in 2021.  However, the Yorkshire hospital is not the only hospital operating under Britain's socialized healthcare system to have 'accidentally' cut off peoples' limbs.

NHS heart care waiting lists double in less than three years.  NHS waiting lists for heart care have doubled in less than three years with hundreds of thousands facing delays that can cost lives, MPs will hear today.  Analysis shows that the heart care waiting list now stands at 405,960 in England, compared with 203,893 in February 2021.  The British Heart Foundation (BHF) said the figures, which will prompt a debate in the Commons on Thursday, were "staggering".  It follows warnings of a steep rise in heart deaths since the pandemic, with an extra 500 a week amid struggles to access NHS care and delays for ambulances.  The charity said "extreme pressure" on the health service and the direct impact of Covid illness on the heart were two of the likely factors fuelling an increase in heart problems and deaths.

Doctor who was too anxious to drive on busy roads wins almost £100,000 after suing the NHS for trying to make her take a job 17 miles from home.  A doctor who was too anxious to drive on busy roads or motorways has won almost £100,000 after the NHS tried to make her take a job 17 miles from her home town.  Dr Madhvi Verma successfully sued Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust for disability discrimination and has been awarded £98,849 following a compensation hearing in Manchester.  The doctor, a specialist in sexual health who suffered from lower back pain and sciatica, had been working for the trust since 2006.  She was based at the genitourinary clinic at the Whitegate Drive Health Centre from 2011 until 2017, just a ten minute walk from her home.

NHS asks patients to choose from 12 genders, 10 sexual preferences and 159 religions.  NHS patients are being asked to choose from 159 religions, 12 genders and 10 sexual preferences before they attend hospital appointments.  Critics said the data collection was "bizarre" and "confusing" with those trying to navigate the health service being asked if they are a Goddess, Satanist or Druid before they access care.  Patients' groups described the system as "wokery to the nth degree" saying the "complex and intrusive" questions would leave users baffled, and raise concerns about personal security.  The questions are asked when patients register with an online portal which enables them to access their hospital appointment details, test results and medical records, before attending NHS outpatient appointments.  Patients are directed to a section on their personal information to fill in their details, with repeated reminders for those who do not oblige.

NHS spends £30m a year on health and wellbeing coaches.  The NHS is spending £30 million a year on health and wellbeing coaches after a hiring spree that patients say would be better spent on doctors.  The number employed by services such as GP practices has risen 18-fold in less than three years to more than 1,000 "full-time equivalents".  The coaches are typically in NHS salary band five, earning at least £28,407 per year, the same as some nurses, midwives and radiographers.  Patient groups have said "the proliferation of ancillary roles like this in GP services raises legitimate concerns about priorities".  The wellbeing coaches are only required to undertake a four-day training course, which is accredited by the Personal Care Institute.  Trainees can expect to learn "all the skills needed" in the first two days, followed by skills development and supervised sessions.  "Coaches will ideally have completed the first two days of the training before working with patients," the website says.

Sorry BMA, but doctors are not underpaid.  Give me a 35 percent pay rise or I'll dump my job in the NHS and go and work in Canada.  That, in as many words, is what Dr Rob Laurenson, co-chair of the BMA Junior Doctors' Committee told us this week.  To which the obvious reply is:  please do.  How soon will you be going, and can we have a whip-round and chip in to pay your one-way air fare?  Oh, and can you take your trainee anaesthetist sidekick, Dr Vivek Trivedi, with you?  Britain will be better off without a pair of entitled would-be trots running the junior division of the doctors' trade union.  The only thing that worries me is whether there are any hospitals in Canada which would want to employ a hardcore trade unionist.  I rather fear that Dr Laurenson may have marked his card and restricted himself to working in a state-owned healthcare system like the NHS, which is likely to be more tolerant of doctors walking off the wards for six days than the private hospitals which form a large part of the Canadian healthcare system.

GP surgeries could be earning almost £1 billion from 'ghost patients'.  Doctors could be earning almost £1 billion from "ghost patients" after a fraud investigation into how many people were registered with GPs was halted.  There were almost six million more patients registered to a GP in England last year than the total population size of the country.  GP practices are paid for each patient they care for and receive £164.64 per registered person in 2022-23.  It means surgeries earned around £955 million for non-existent patients.  The NHS figures, analysed by the PA news agency, revealed tha there were 62.9 million patients registered to GPs in November 2023 — despite the population of England being just 57.1 million, according to the Office for National Statistics' latest estimate in 2022.

73 Three and Four-Year Olds, Hundreds of Children Under Six Sent to Disgraced NHS Transgender Clinic.  Children as young as three years old have been referred to Britain's socialised medicine's 'Gender Identity Development Service' transgender clinic, with hundreds of young children referred in the past decade.  382 children aged six and under have been referred to the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in the Tavistock and Portman Trust, known commonly as the National Health Service's transgender clinic, in the past ten years new figures from the Trust reveal.  The numbers, published by the Daily Mail, reveal how even the youngest children have been pushed into interacting with the controversial clinic, and that the numbers being referred to GIDS have soared in recent years.

The healthcare system has a new mantra:  Stay home, protect the NHS, die early.  I have had many dealings with the senior leadership.  I'm sorry to say that the quality of many of these people is just not up to scratch.  Their obsession with politically-correct diversity targets leads you to fear that the asylum has well and truly been taken over by the inmates.  Any remaining bridges that existed between myself and the NHS have been burnt.  Many medics agree with me, but those working mainly in the NHS are bullied into silence due to fears of professional punishment by those in charge.  The NHS very effectively uses the five Ds of rationing brutally and relentlessly — Delay, Denial, Decision by Committee, Deflection and Discrimination — of which Delay is the most effective.  All sustained by a huge army of PR people, tasked with excusing the many failures of the leadership.  Millions of patients continue to be let down by the system and those running it.  But ironically, when you get to the front of the queue the technology is just fantastic.  The clinical teams have the training, skills and dedication.  Whether it is cancer care or open heart surgery, it can be totally world beating.  That's the paradox.

Britain is paying the deadly price for telling the public to 'protect the NHS'.  One of the most controversial slogans during the lockdowns was telling people to stay home to "protect the NHS".  This was deeply resented by actual NHS chiefs, who saw this as a hideous inversion of their duty.  "The NHS is there to protect people, not the other way around," one told me at the time.  He had another fear: that asking people to "protect" the NHS by not using it was the exact opposite of the message they should be giving.  In pandemics, the risk is that people avoid everyday healthcare — and that kills people as surely as the virus.  So it was to prove.  We know, now, that there were 8 million fewer GP appointments in the years after the first lockdown.  So what happened to these people?  The trajectory of the NHS waiting list was always going to depend on the answer.  If they all returned over the next two years, the waiting list would peak at about 12 million.  If only half did, then 8.5 million.  Now, it seems to have peaked at about 7.7 million — suggesting just a third of those missing patients came to seek help.

The NHS is not underfunded.  The UK is now comfortably in the global top 10 in terms of healthcare spenders.  In 2022, the UK spent 11.3 percent of GDP on healthcare, ahead of, for example, Belgium (10.9 percent), the Netherlands (10.2 percent) and Australia (9.6 percent), about on a par with Switzerland, and surpassed only by the United States, Japan, France, Germany, and Austria.  This goes against the conventional wisdom that the NHS is "chronically underfunded", and that "underfunding" is the source of all of its problems.  It is true that if we look at healthcare spending in cash terms rather than as a proportion of GDP, the UK drops out of the top 10.  This is because, even though we still — wrongly — think of Britain as a rich country, by OECD standards, Britain is not "rich" at all.  Healthcare spending may be 11.3 percent of GDP in both Britain and Switzerland, but 11.3 percent of Switzerland's GDP per capita is a lot more than 11.3 percent of Britain's GDP per capita.  However, there is a good reason why healthcare spending is usually reported in percent of GDP rather than in cash terms.  Healthcare is a very labour-intensive sector (which is one reason why it is so hard to squeeze any productivity improvements out of it), so the bulk of healthcare spending is staff costs.

NHS forced to spend almost £65m to make hundreds of ambulances compliant with London Mayor Sadiq Khan's ULEZ scheme.  The NHS has been forced to spend nearly £65 million to make hundreds of ambulances compliant with London Mayor Sadiq Khan's Ulez scheme.  Under Ulez, drivers must pay £12.50 a day to drive in the capital if their vehicle fails to meet emissions standards.  It was expanded to cover the whole of Greater London in August.

NHS consultants are sent on tick-box training courses 'a child could do' as waiting lists grow.  NHS consultants are being made to complete tick-box training 'an eight-year-old could do' while patients languish on waiting lists, MPs have heard.  NHS leaders were grilled on why staff in times of crisis are being sent on mandatory training courses, such as on computer and fire safety.  Dr Caroline Johnson, an MP who was a health minister during Liz Truss's brief premiership, said she has had to do 29 mandatory training programmes — some annually.

The app that promised an NHS 'revolution' then went down in flames.  The NHS spent millions of pounds on a flawed AI chatbot whose creator used aggressive sales techniques and overpromised what it could do, former staff have claimed.  Babylon Health, a tech start-up championed by Matt Hancock and advised by Dominic Cummings, promised that its AI chatbot could keep patients who didn't need to be seen by a health professional out of the overstretched NHS.  But the technology was not as sophisticated as the company claimed, with former staff now claiming that what began as a crude tool based on "decision trees written by doctors, put into an Excel spreadsheet" never realised its promised potential.

If there was a way to fix the NHS, we would probably have found it by now.  Last week, I spoke at a panel at Think Tent 2023, a series of fringe events jointly organised by the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Taxpayers' Alliance which was running alongside the Conservative Party Conference.  The panel was on the question of 'How can we improve Britain's health service?', and my take was that we probably cannot, fundamentally.  The NHS has been reorganised more times than anyone can count.  If there was a way to fix it, we would probably have found it by now.  At the same time, we have good examples nearby of healthcare models that have been proven to work, if, by 'work', we mean achieve good clinical outcomes and offer rapid access to treatment at a tolerable cost.  So why not ditch the NHS altogether, and go for one of those models instead?  Why not adopt a system like the one in the Netherlands, where they have a universal private health insurance system with a competitive market in healthcare provision?  They achieve some of the best outcomes in the world, and waiting times for common treatments are between a third and half of ours.  Their 'Social Health Insurance' (SHI) system is just as equitable as ours, and total healthcare spending is comparable.

Why is an NHS trust offering reparations for slavery links?  As many as one in seven Scots may be languishing on the NHS backlog.  As Scottish Labour never tires of reminding voters — especially those who happen to live in the Rutherglen constituency — that means everyone must surely know someone who is waiting months for treatment.  So the decision by NHS Lothian to spend taxpayers' cash on "a programme of reparations" to Jamaica and Africa will raise more than a few eyebrows, especially among Edinburgh residents enduring painful delays for a knee or hip operation.  Why must today's hard-pressed taxpayers foot the bill for this blatant act of virtue signalling?  Hundreds of years ago a surgeon who owned a slave plantation in the Caribbean made a bequest to the Royal infirmary of Edinburgh.  Accountants, presumably contracted at great cost, have since been spending a lot of time and effort on calculating how much that bequest is now worth.  And we are all to believe, unwaveringly, that the £39.1 million figure they came up with is entirely accurate.

NHS is directing vulnerable teens to 'transing factories'.  The NHS is directing vulnerable teenagers confused about their gender to 'transing factories' that believe in controversial 'affirmation' techniques, according to a former Tavistock Trust doctor.  There are more than 7,500 children and young people on NHS waiting lists who are confused about their gender — with some set to wait more than five years to be seen.  Four regional gender clinics are directing teenagers aged 17 and over to support from Gendered Intelligence, a trans charity that rejected elements of the Cass report that was commissioned to investigate the scandal-ridden Tavistock children's gender clinic.

Never-ending NHS strikes force hospitals to cancel 'more than a MILLION appointments'.  One million NHS appointments have now been cancelled due to 'damaging and demoralising' strikes, figures are expected to confirm today.  A walk-out by junior doctors and consultants in England last week is thought to have seen more than 100,000 consultations postponed.  The toll will add to the 885,000 appointments already axed since unions began their crusade for better pay last December.

NHS to ban 'useful' anaesthetic to hit net zero targets.  The NHS is banning an anaesthetic gas to meet net zero targets in a move that a leading climate expert has warned lacks any scientific basis.  The health service has said it is "decommissioning" desflurane by early next year in order to help reduce "harmful emissions".  But in a keynote speech to a major conference of anaesthetists, Prof Dame Julia Slingo, the Met Office's former chief scientist, said: "NHS directives to ban desflurane are not supported by climate science and should be reversed.  The use of desflurane should be based on what is best for the patient."  The comments by Prof Dame Julia, an expert on climate science who led a team of more than 500 scientists at the Met Office, were welcomed by a series of anaesthetists working in the NHS who are concerned that the drug will only be available in "exceptional clinical circumstances".  Several figures present at the Association of Anaesthetists annual congress on Sept 13 said Dame Julia's remarks were greeted with applause, despite the body having formally backed the NHS move earlier this year.  Some anaesthetists believe the planned ban will unnecessarily restrict what anaesthetics can be given to patients undergoing surgery.

The Editor says...
The people who came up with this idea apparently don't comprehend the mass of the atmosphere, or the concept of acceptable trade-offs.

MP Miriam Cates says the General Medical Council removing references to "mothers" from a maternity document is "absurd.".  "At the heart of the whole trans movement is a deep misogyny that not only wants to erase women, but wants to say that men can be women."  [Tweet with video clip]

Has the NHS forgotten its real purpose?  As doctors down stethoscopes and walk out of hospitals in their ongoing strike for better pay and working conditions, the public might reasonably conclude that the NHS is underfunded.  How, then, do we make sense of this week's revelation that NHS England is set to open three new departments focusing on equality and diversity?  Either there are insufficient funds to pay doctors and nurses a decent wage or there is money to splash out on rainbow lanyards and unconscious bias training.  Both cannot be true at the same time.  The three new NHS England departments, set to open in April 2024, will be called 'Equality, Diversity and Inclusion', 'People and Culture' and 'People and Communities'.  I am no highly-paid inclusivity expert, but it strikes me there is potentially some overlap here.  Are the 'communities' and 'culture' staff not also concerned with equality, diversity and inclusion?  And what about all the existing human resource officers?  Are we to believe they are unconcerned about the employment rights of transgender nurses?

In England, the death panel of socialized medicine appears again.  A British court has held that Britain's National Health Service, which has long been the gold standard of socialized medicine, can stop treating a 19-year-old woman who is conscious and wants to live.  This is the natural endpoint of the rationing that is inherent in socialized medicine.  Ostensibly, socialized medicine promises to give top-quality healthcare to everyone.  And if you're a national treasure like Stephen Hawking, you will get that type of care, because it looks really bad if the government lets a renowned physicist with a degenerative disease die because treating him sucks up too many government resources.  However, the reality of socialized medicine is that it revolves around rationing.  The government has "X" dollars available for medical care, and it will allocate that money according to a political calculation that doesn't necessarily involve actual healthcare.

The lunatics have taken over the NHS asylum.  What took them so long?  There's good news for anyone lying on a stretcher waiting for admission to A&E, who has been held in a queue for a hip operation or is pulling their hair out simply trying to book a GP appointment for a worrying pain down their left side.  There may be no doctor to see you, but you may get to see a diversity officer instead.  NHS England is proposing to set up three new departments, involving an extra 244 new posts.  There will be an "Equality, Diversity and Inclusion" department, one called "People and Culture" and another called "People and Communities".  In other words, the NHS may often disappoint its patients, but at least in future they should all be equally disappointed, with all 57 ethnic varieties and 100 or so different genders ending up waiting just as long for treatment as each other.  No doubt the new officials will find some way to fill their time, even though, as a leading oncologist at a London hospital recently revealed to me, doctors are already being forced to watch and re-watch 23 training videos, one of which, in his words, is "to try to bang into us that we are all born and bred racists and that we are full of unconscious bias".

Government healthcare Is a proven failure.  Three weeks ago, the Guardian confirmed a growing exodus of senior physicians and surgeons from Great Britain relocating to other countries.  The on-going British doctor shortage comes as no surprise.  British doctors went out on strike in 2016, and since then, their dissatisfaction with the NHS has only gotten worse.  Wait times for NHS care have been medically dangerous for years and are getting longer.  Delays in diagnosis and treatment of cancer and heart disease result in avoidable, unnecessary deaths.  In January 2018, the NHS announced cancellation of "50,000 scheduled surgeries" due to insufficient staff and/or facilities.  There is no evidence these insufficiencies have been addressed.  Patients can't get care without doctors.  Bureaucracies defend themselves.  The NHS is no exception.  For years, death rates for children undergoing heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary were unacceptable.  Yet NHS officials suppressed the information, altered reports of results, and continued to allow the low-quality surgeons to operate.  When this scandal finally broke, an investigation ensued.  Two Bristol surgeons were fired.  The institution was placed on probation.  Changes in the NHS recommended by the Bristol Report were not implemented.

Deaths on the NHS waiting list double in five years as critics slam 'decade of underinvestment' in health service.  The number of patients who died while waiting for treatment has doubled in five years, according to new data.  The total number is higher than when the country was in lockdown, as health leaders have attributed the rise to struggles to clear the backlog after the pandemic and NHS strikes.  It comes despite Rishi Sunak's pledge to cut the NHS waiting list as one of his five key pledges ahead of the next general election.

NHS needs bold solutions to survive, says leading psychiatrist.  Whether it's setting up a Bank of England-type body to run it or fining patients for missing appointments, healthcare leaders, policymakers and practitioners past and present have a wealth of ideas about how they would change the NHS for the better.  Professor Dinesh Bhugra, a psychiatrist and former president of the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Psychologists, asked 14 peers, physicians and patients' representatives for their prescription for the NHS.

UK Healthcare Waiting List Breaks Record, Now Over 7.6 million..  More than 7.6 million people in the United Kingdom — around 12 percent of the total population — are waiting to receive routine hospital treatment from the country's socialized healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS), representing the highest figure since records began in 2007 and increasing by another 100,000 since May.  Just under 400,000 people have been on the NHS waiting list for more than a year, around 7,000 people have been waiting for treatment for over 18 months, and more than 20,000 have waited longer than two months (62 days) for urgent cancer screenings, according to data released by NHS England.

National Health Service in Great Britain bans puberty blockers.  The National Health Service of Great Britain is striking back.  The backlash against "gender-affirming care" is in full swing in Europe, with Great Britain utterly reversing course on using hormones and puberty blockers on minors.  Until recently Great Britain was going full steam ahead transitioning children.  But the Tavistock scandal, where the UK's gender treatment complex resided, turned out to be an ideologically-driven and utterly corrupt mess that promoted fake science.  [Video clip]  Tavistock was closed down, and the UK began reversing course as it became clear that there simply was no scientific backing for the suppression of puberty and transitioning of children from one sex to another.  [Tweet]

UK National Health Service bans puberty blockers for gender transitions for minors.  The United Kingdom's National Health Service announced on Friday it plans to ban puberty blockers outside of the use of clinical trials as well as increasingly to regulate gender transition treatments for minors.  "We have previously made clear ... the intention that the NHS will only commission puberty suppressing hormones as part of clinical research," the NHS announcement said.  The 25-page document for U.K. practitioners specifies that the NHS "will adopt a holistic, multi-disciplinary integrated approach to assessing and responding to an individual's needs" and will center on "fully involving the child or young person and their family."

My NHS Employer Wouldn't Recognise My Mask Exemption and Made My Life Misery.  Viewed from the vantage point of the latest additions to the mountain of evidence about the lack of efficacy of face masks and their harm to wearers, that anyone — let alone a health trust — would mandate their usage to patients and staff beggars belief.  But even in the early days of the COVID-19 'emergency' it was clearly visible from the flipflopping guidance of 'The Science' that, except as a means of coercion and control, they didn't work.  Looking back, it is quite clear that when it came to their mask policies, my employer, Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust, had little interest in patient care and staff welfare.  I struggled and I was bullied, as, to my knowledge, were other staff; and I know that there were clients who missed out on the care they needed.

NHS is more worried about climate change than about you.  This is the Chief sustainability officer for the NHS talking at a WEF conference.  The staff's biggest issue is climate change!  Not you, not waiting lists, not lack of resources... but climate change.  [Video clip]

The jab victims denied heart treatment, and the remedies the NHS won't even consider.  A young man I know has been suffering heart pain and exhaustion for several weeks.  He has twice been taken to hospital by paramedic teams called as an emergency when stabbing pains became intense.  He has consulted his GP and been seen by two cardiologists.  Following a scan, they diagnosed pericarditis, inflammation of the lining around the heart.  He has been asked all sorts of questions about his lifestyle, including physical fitness and mental health, but has received no clue as to what might have caused his condition.  Not once has anyone asked him whether he received the Covid vaccine, despite heart inflammation being a recognised risk from these gene-based products, especially for young men.  He had two shots, believing it was compulsory if he was to be allowed to travel.  I tentatively mentioned to him research going back at least two years that highlighted the risk, but he clearly finds it hard to contemplate the possibility that the authorities could have so failed him.

Say 'pregnant people', NHS watchdog tells staff in gender neutral drive.  An NHS watchdog has urged staff to say "pregnant people" in a drive to use gender neutral language.  The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), a taxpayer-funded quango providing national guidance across the NHS, has rolled out a style guide which says while sex should be used "if talking about biology", non-gendered language can be used elsewhere.  The internal guide for staff says: "You can usually use gender neutral language if the population is broad.  This means using 'people', 'they' and 'them' instead of 'women', 'men' and 'his' or 'her'.  "For example, 'Warn people having treatment for prostate cancer of the likely effects of the treatment on their urinary function'."  In the previous version published in 2020, the guide urged staff to "use 'pregnant women' (not 'pregnant people') for consistency with the NHS website".  But in an update in February 2023, the guide now says:  "Use additive language if there are varying populations in the guidance.

Chaplain awarded £10k after NHS Trust said diversity 'takes precedence' over religious belief.  A Catholic chaplain who lost his job has been awarded £10,000 after the NHS Trust he worked for claimed that equality and diversity "take precedence over religious belief".  Rev. Dr Patrick Pullicino, 73, launched legal action against an NHS trust after claiming that he was ousted for answering a hospital patient's questions about the Church's teaching on marriage.  Rev Pullicino was pursuing a claim against the Trust for harassment, religious discrimination and victimisation.  A trial was set to take place in July at Croydon Employment Tribunal.  However, the London NHS Trust, which denies that it has discriminated against him, settled the case by awarding him £10,000 in compensation "for perceived injury to feelings".  The figure falls within the middle band of guidelines for "serious" cases of discrimination.

Obamacare: Still Killing People 13 Years In.  Before the ACA, average maximum wait time to see a primary care physician was a unconscionable: 92 days.  With ACA expansion of government-provided, no-charge Medicaid insurance, maximum wait times increased to 120 days and produced death-by-queue.  Death by queue is a phrase coined in the United Kingdom, meaning dying while waiting in line for care that is technically possible but unavailable in time to save lives.  Death by queue has long been a feature of the vaunted British National Health Service (NHS) and has now become noticeable in the U.S.  In Illinois over three years, 752 Medicaid enrollees died waiting for desperately needed medical treatment.  An internal Veterans' Affairs Department audit concluded that "47,000 veterans may have died" waiting in line for care that was technically possible but unavailable.  Veterans are covered by federal Tricare insurance.  An accurate estimate of death by queue in the U.S. is not available.  In Great Britain, at least "117,000 die[d] on waiting lists for NHS" in 2020 and 2021.

Most health care facilities have no plans to discontinue universal masking, survey shows.  A survey assessing universal masking showed nearly all facilities represented planned to continue doing so, with the most common reasons being prevention of respiratory viruses and limiting the impact on staff.  "In dialog with our hospital epidemiology colleagues, my co-authors and I saw value in not only knowing what approaches their facilities were taking to masking but the rationale for their choice," Graham M. Snyder, MD, SM, medical director of infection prevention and hospital epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told Healio.

Ministers come under pressure to scrap 'preposterous' and 'dangerous' LTNs as it emerges 240 ambulances were delayed by low traffic schemes.  Ministers were last night under growing pressure from their own MPs and campaigners to scrap 'preposterous' and 'dangerous' low-traffic neighbourhoods.  It came as new figures showed nearly 240 ambulances were delayed from reaching potentially life-threatening callouts due to the controversial schemes.  Experts said the recorded incidents would be 'the tip of the iceberg' as they relate only to London and there are hundreds more low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in other cities.  It is also believed that not all incidents were recorded.

Length of doctors' training should be slashed from seven years to fix staffing crisis, says NHS boss.  The time it takes to qualify as a doctor should be slashed to plug staffing gaps, the chairman of NHS England has said.  Richard Meddings suggested new medics were over-qualified after seven years of training because 'most' did not get to use their full skills on the job.  The former banker, who took up his role a year ago, said the NHS has fewer doctors and nurses than other developed countries.

Hundreds of thousands of people on NHS waiting lists forced to cut working hours.  Hundreds of thousands of people stuck on NHS waiting lists have been forced to cut their working hours in a blow to the Chancellor's back to work push.  One in five adults were waiting for a hospital appointment, test, or medical treatment in the two weeks [ending] February 26, according to the Office for National Statistics.  Long waits for treatment have hit people's ability to work, with over 1 million people saying delays were affecting their jobs.  Of those, one in 10 have signed off work as long-term sick and a quarter said they have had to reduce their working hours.  Some workers are also putting off going for a promotion or doing training courses.

Britain's NHS was once idolized.  Now its worst-ever crisis is fueling a boom in private health care.  Tens of thousands of nurses and nearly 12,000 ambulance workers went on strike Monday over pay and working conditions in the biggest walkout in the 75-year history of Britain's National Health Service (NHS).  Escalating industrial action comes after years of falling wages, stretched budgets and staff shortages that have left the NHS in a state of crisis, with waiting times for treatment at a record high.  At the same time, an aging population needs its services more than ever.  That unhappy mix is fueling a boom in demand for private health care from a much broader swathe of the UK population than ever before — a fundamental shift for a nation with one of the world's best-known universal health systems.

Britain's crumbling NHS.  Sewage is leaking into cancer wards, maternity units and A&E departments, according to a [scathing] audit of England's crumbling NHS hospitals.  Urine and faecal matter have been found seeping into wards, pouring through ceilings and spewing out of drains, with one hospital trust recording 105 sewage leaks in 2022 — almost one every three days.  Patients have slipped on the sewage while staff have become ill, complaining of headaches and nausea from the smell.

If you need an ambulance in England, you could die waiting.  The BBC published a story today about one families tragic experience with the NHS ambulance service.  Back in November a 68-year-old man named Martin Clark began having chest pains.  His wife dialed 999 which is the British equivalent of 911 and asked for an ambulance.  Thirty-two minutes later no ambulance had arrived and she called 999 again to inform them her husband was getting worse.  Finally, after another 15 minutes passed, the family called a third time to inform the dispatcher that they would drive Mr. Clark to the hospital themselves.  [He died at the hospital.]  What makes this especially newsworthy is that it's not that unusual.  The wait time for an ambulance has been in the range of 45-60 minutes for the past year or more.  That's not for all calls but for so-called category 2 calls like the one from Ann Clark.  Category 2 calls include emergencies like "stroke or chest pain."  And the situation got significantly worse in December when the average response time shot up to more than 90 minutes.

14 absurdities on full public display.  [#6] The health care unions are coordinating their activities to maximise the number of people that they kill.  Junior doctors are now talking about walking out for 72 hours — and refusing to see emergencies.  The BMA [British Medical Association], appears to have been taken over by lefties and communists.  It does seem to me rather odd that a bunch of commies seem to want to destroy the world's most prominent socialist healthcare system so that they can get richer and buy their Mercedes and BMW cars a year earlier.  But maybe I've completely misunderstood.  If the doctors get the massive pay rise they're demanding the money will have to come out of the NHS budget and patients will suffer.

Under Britain's socialized medicine, a cancer diagnosis meets a 3-year waitlist.  For decades, American leftists have been insisting that the way to beat America's soaring health costs is through socialized medicine.  England, Europe, and even Cuba, they assure us, are the models we should look to when it comes to bringing affordable healthcare to everything.  However, healthcare in these countries isn't looking so healthy lately.  In England, for example, a 61-year-old man with a cancer diagnosis was just told that he must wait three years (not a typo) to be seen at a hospital.

Granddad who battled cancer is told he has a three-year wait for a hospital appointment.  A cancer-battling granddad has been left flabbergasted after being told he must wait three years for a hospital appointment.  Andrew Jones, 61, won't be allowed to attend the medical facility until it's almost time for the next World Cup in North America.  The granddad from Bridgnorth, Shrops, will have to wait until June 2025 before he can go for a check up at Princess Royal Hospital in Telford, the Express and Star reports.  Mr Jones thought there was a mistake on the letter he received on Saturday but was horrified to discover his appointment is correct, leaving him with nearly 1,000 days to wait.

The Editor says...
He can't be the only one waiting.  There must be others who have to wait 999 days, 998 days, etc.

UK nursing strikes: Which countries pay nurses the most and the least in Europe?  Up to 100,000 nurses in the UK will go on strike on December 15 and 20 for more pay.  This will be the first strike in the 106-year history of their union, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), and the largest in the history of the country's NHS.  Salary and inflation figures suggest that this should not be a surprise.  Annual gross salaries of hospital nurses in the UK increased by 10 percent in nominal terms but fell by 6 percent in real terms between 2010 and 2019 according to a dataset released by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).  The UK is not the only country in which health workers went on strike in 2022.

NHS Dentistry 'At Tipping Point'.  A BBC investigation found nine in ten NHS dental practices across the UK are not accepting new adult patients.  Some practices have a waiting list of nearly 2,000, and in some places, people have to wait for five years to be taken on as NHS patients.  The British Dental Association says NHS dentistry is at a tipping point, and patients will pay the price.  [Video clip]

The only NHS transgender clinic for children 'buried' the fact that 372 of 1,069 patients were autistic.  Britain's only NHS transgender clinic for children was last night accused of burying disturbing figures showing a third of its young patients are autistic.  Since 2011, specialists at The Tavistock Centre's Gender Identity Development Service in London have seen more than 1,000 under- 18s.  An internal review discovered 372 of these patients — some 35 percent — exhibited 'moderate or severe autistic traits.'

Man Tries to Give Blood Amid a Shortage, Is Rejected Because He Won't Say Whether He's Pregnant.  For any men wanting to donate blood, make sure you're medically self-aware.  For example, you should be adequately informed as to whether you've been impregnated.  Such was a lesson reportedly learned by Leslie Sinclair this month.  The central Scotland resident had hoped to give life-sustaining fluid to others in need.  Sadly, the effort encountered coagulation.  According to the Daily Mail, the 66-year-old was handed a form asking if he was currently pregnant.  Furthermore, the facility needed to know if he'd been knocked up within the last half-year.  The inquiry left him less than impressed:  ["]When he complained that as a man in his 60s this question did not apply and he should not have to answer it, Mr Sinclair said staff at the clinic told him they could not accept his blood.["]

Anguish of young man who had sex organs removed on NHS then regretted it the same day.  A young British man who had his genitals removed during gender reassignment surgery is suing the NHS over the operation in a historic legal action.  He complains that doctors did not warn him of the drastic outcome of the body-altering surgery which has left him infertile, incontinent and feeling like a 'sexual eunuch'.  He said on Twitter yesterday:  'The minute I woke up from surgery, I knew I had made the biggest mistake of my life.'

Information On The NHS Monkeypox Page [was] Edited To Make It Sound More Worrying.  Just a few days ago the NHS's Monkeypox page was altered to change the narrative in a few key ways.  Prior to the edit, monkeypox "did not spread easily between people[."  N]ow it does.

The NHS just edited their Monkeypox page — to make it scarier.  A few days ago the UK's National Health Service (NHS) edited their Monkeypox page to alter the narrative in a few key ways.  Firstly, they removed a paragraph from the "How do you get Monkeypox?" section.  Up until a few days ago, according to archived links, the Monkeypox page said this, regarding person-to-person tranmission:  ["]It's very uncommon to get monkeypox from a person with the infection because it does not spread easily between people.["]  [T]his has now been totally removed.  Secondly, they've removed this paragraph, which was present up until at least November of 2021 (and maybe much more recently, there are no archives between November and May):  ["] [Monkeypox] is usually a mild illness that will get better on its own without treatment.  Some people can develop more serious symptoms, so patients with monkeypox in the UK are cared for in specialist hospitals.["]  The new "treatment" paragraph reads:  ["]Treatment for monkeypox aims to relieve symptoms.  The illness is usually mild and most people recover in 2 to 4 weeks [...] You may need to stay in a specialist hospital, so your symptoms can be treated and to prevent the infection spreading to other people.["]

Nurse Tells Patients in British Emergency Room They Might Wait 13 Hours to See a Doctor.  Britain's National Health Service (NHS) has given the world plenty of examples showing why America should run from socialized medicine, such as soulless, bureaucratic decision-making and long wait times for planned procedures.  Now, a shocking new video shows yet another reason:  insufficient service for the community, resulting in waits of seven-and-a-half hours and up for emergency room visitors to see a doctor.  A video that was taken in the Harlow A&E (Accident and Emergency) waiting room, part of the Princess Alexandra hospital NHS trust in Essex, UK, has gone viral.  Filmed late Monday afternoon [6/6/2022], the footage shows a nurse addressing the people waiting in the crowded room.

England's NHS promoting prostitution to pay for gender transition treatments.  One of England's National Health Service-funded clinics is promoting prostitution as a way for transgender people to pay for their transition treatments.  Being a sex worker 'can be useful and sometimes empowering', according to a guide produced by CliniQ, a sexual counselling service for transgender people at King's College Hospital in London.  It adds: 'It can help us pay for parts of our transition.'  The booklet by CliniQ, which is part-funded by King's College NHS Trust and three London local authorities, also suggests that transgender men — people born in female bodies but transitioning to male — can hide the fact that they are trans when visiting gay sex parties.

We can't keep 'protecting the NHS' forever.  This week the NHS in Bristol asked householders undertaking DIY jobs to 'take care to avoid any injuries that could lead to unnecessary trips to A&E', in response to mounting accident and emergency waits at the trust.  This follows last week's call by NHS Confederation chief Matthew Taylor for a return of mandatory face masks, as Covid pressures mount on hospitals.  To 'protect the NHS', as the mantra goes, we're being asked to reduce the risks we take, in the hope that demand at the hospital front door will decrease.  In truth, reducing the roughly 200,000 annual DIY accidents that require hospital treatment — accounting for about 1 in 550 urgent calls or visits to A&E — would have little impact on the overall workload.  The NHS is busy, of course.  It responds to 110million urgent calls or visits each year.  There were 2.17 million attendances in March alone — 29 percent more attendances than last year.  If you attend in an emergency, you can expect a substantial wait — in March, only 72 percent of patients were seen within four hours, across all A&E departments.

UK Hospital Denies a Victim Was Raped Because the Ward Was for 'Women Only'.  There are times when reading about how we are adapting to a many-gendered world that I have to check to make sure I'm still on good old Planet Earth and have not been transported to Cloud Cuckoo Land to live with people who deny the reality of existence.  The Cloud Cuckoo Landers who 30 years ago may have been living under lock and key in some insane asylum are now taking their place in positions of authority and are dictating how the rest of us should view reality.  It would be amusing if there weren't real-life victims of this nonsense.  A British woman reported to police that she had been raped during a stay in a hospital.  But the police were told that simply wasn't possible because the ward where the woman claims she was raped was for "females only."  And since there "was no male in the hospital, therefore the rape could not have happened."  Emma Nicholson, the Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, stood before the members of the House of Lords and pointed out that the rape was caught on CCTV, but it took nearly a year for the hospital to admit there was a transgendered person in the ward who raped the victim.

Patients losing government aid after 'living too long'.  The BBC is reporting that more than 1,300 patients each year in England are losing their palliative care funding from the National Health Service (NHS) because they are living longer than the government expected — creating an environment ripe for coerced assisted suicide or euthanasia.  NHS is the UK's government-funded health care program.  The fast-track continuing health care scheme covers the full costs of a person's palliative care needs, and is not dependent on income.  Individuals qualify based on evidence of a rapidly-deteriorating condition that is considered to be terminal or entering a terminal phase.  When a patient outlives their prognosis, their funding is often removed.  According to the BBC analysis, between 2018 and 2021, 9,037 terminally ill or rapidly declining-in-health individuals had their palliative care funding reviewed.  Nearly half of them lost that funding because they had survived for too long.

Nine million to get booster jabs early:  Boris Johnson urges experts to cut six-month wait for third Covid vaccine to speed rollout.  Britain's sluggish booster vaccine rollout is being held up by the NHS sending texts to elderly Britons who 'do not know how to use their phones', medics warned today amid growing demands to speed up the drive and prevent ministers from reimposing restrictions once more.  Reena Barrai, a pharmacist in Surrey, said many patients have come in 'anxious' because they cannot work out how to access the online system to book their top-up dose.

The Editor says...
Left-wing politicians assume that you're too stupid to take advantage of all the wonderful "free" goodies they provide.  If you don't show up for a dose of their experimental "vaccine," they presume that it's because you don't know how to use your phone.  The possibility that the bureaucrats are being ignored is never considered.

NHS Test and Trace criticised as 'eyewatering' waste of taxpayers' money.  NHS Test and Trace has been an "eyewatering" waste of taxpayers' money that did not achieve its objectives, despite £37 billion of funding, a report has warned.  The funding — equal to almost a fifth of the entire health service budget — was used to hire more than 2,000 consultants who were employed on rates of more than £1,000 a day, the report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) found.  At certain times, just 11 per cent of contact tracers were working, the PAC found, with the figure never rising beyond 49 percent.  MPs said billions had been squandered on a failed promise to "enable people to return towards a more normal way of life", that instead saw two national lockdowns and a rise in case numbers.

Does the NHS care more about wokeness than healthcare?  The pandemic has put the NHS under considerable strain.  Waiting lists have reached record highs.  Surely, given these enormous challenges, you would expect the NHS to concentrate on its core mission.  You would think that every available penny would go towards ensuring the delivery of decent healthcare.  But you'd be wrong.  In the eyes of those who run the NHS, there is far more important work to do — ie, ensuring that the NHS is 'diverse' and 'inclusive'.  On spiked we have previously asked why, especially in a time of crisis, the NHS is forever hiring more diversity managers — who are often on wages well above those given to nurses and junior doctors.

Doctor who 'botched three major gallbladder operations in five days' is still working for the NHS.  A doctor who allegedly botched three gallbladder operations in five days is still working for the NHS, despite being under investigation by the medical watchdog.  Camilo Valero, a consultant general surgeon, has been working at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals Trust for the past 21 months although he is not allowed to operate on patients with bile complaints.  The Royal College of Surgeons said in July last year that Mr Valero should 'undertake non-biliary tract surgery' with the help of a 'nominated consultant surgeon colleague' until the General Medical Council gives a ruling.

White NHS staff are told to study their 'privilege' and that they should feel 'uncomfortable'.  New 'anti-racism' guidance has been shared 'for white people' working within the national health service in a blog post on an official NHS website.  The NHS Leadership Academy, which prepares staff to take steps into more senior roles within the organisation, shared guidance for employees including recommendations to read up on 'white privilege' and ready themselves for political discussions at work.  In five new tips published by Aishnine Benjamin, the head of equality, diversity and inclusion at the Nursing and Midwifery Council, white members of staff are told they should not be defensive and that 'ignorance isn't an excuse.'

Even an English accent counts as 'privilege', according to the NHS woke brigade.  Speaking with a "cottage cream-thick English accent" is an example of privilege, NHS leaders have been told in seminars on racial justice.  NHS executives and medics have attended a series of online sessions discussing "whiteness" and "systemic" racism in the health service, as part of diversity training.  The Telegraph has obtained copies of the internal talks, organised by NHS England's inclusivity chief and attended by hundreds of staff.

Hospital figures for Covid cases 'misleading'.  One in four patients classed as a Covid hospitalisation is being treated for other reasons, official data reveal, prompting claims that the public has been misled.  For the first time, the NHS national stocktake establishes how many patients categorised as Covid hospitalisations had another primary cause of admission.  The data shows that of 5,021 patients this week classed as hospitalised by Covid, 1,166 were admitted for other reasons.  [Paywall]

England's National Health Service planned involuntary euthanasia for the elderly.  Except for the air you breathe, everything else in life is a finite resource.  There are only two ways to allocate such resources: rationing or the free market.  Rationing means those in power decide who gets what; the free market usually ensures that, through the profit motive and competition, the scarce resource will become more available at a better price.  England's National Health Service is all about rationing — and the latest example is a secret plan drafted in 2017 and 2018 stating that, in a pandemic, if things got sticky, anyone over 70 would be left to die.

Top doctor's chilling claim:  The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year.  NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday [6/18/2012].  Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial 'death pathway' into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.  He claimed there was often a lack of clear evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway, a method of looking after terminally ill patients that is used in hospitals across the country.  It is designed to come into force when doctors believe it is impossible for a patient to recover and death is imminent.

History shows us why vaccines must be voluntary.  The history of vaccination is one of an heroic effort to rid humanity of deadly and blighting disease.  Vaccination has scored rightly celebrated successes against smallpox, polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, mumps, measles, yellow fever and many other illnesses. [...] In response to the horrors of the Nazi regime's perverse 'social hygiene' programmes in the 1930s and 1940s, the European Convention on Human Rights contains a clause saying that nobody should be obliged to have a medical procedure against their will.  Today, the NHS's Covid-19 National Immunisation Vaccination System computer programme will not let vaccinators proceed without checking that the recipient consents.  Voluntarism, in the end, proved to be a tremendous success.  In the postwar years, the NHS vaccination campaigns against polio, tuberculosis, diphtheria, mumps and measles worked because they engaged the positive support of the population.  Under the terrible challenge of coronavirus, the temptation to use coercion in health provision is strong, but history shows why the voluntary principle is still best.

Midwives told to stop using terms such as 'breastfeeding' and 'breastmilk'.  Midwives have been told to stop using terms including "breastfeeding" and "breastmilk" as part of a new trans-friendly policy at an NHS trust.  Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) NHS Trust is the first in the country to formally implement a gender inclusive language policy for its maternity services department — which will now be known as "perinatal services".  Staff have been told to avoid using the word "mothers" on its own and have been given a list of alternative terms to use when addressing patients including "mothers or birthing parents", "breast/chestfeeding" and "maternal and parental".

To Be Inclusive of Non-Binary Parents, Hospitals Nix the Terms 'Breast Milk' and 'Father'.  We're living in the age of inclusion.  To that end, nurses are being asked to think before speaking — about nursing.  As reported by the New York Post, on Monday [2/8/2021], two UK hospitals put the kibosh on "breast milk." Words matter, and the wrong ones hurt.  Hence, medical workers are being asked to reference "human milk" — in order to include transgender and non-binary parents.  In the prenatal units of Sussex and Brighton University Hospitals NHS Trust, staff should eliminate words such as "breastfeeding."

UK Woman Arrested For Filming Inside Empty Hospital.  A woman in the UK was arrested by police after she filmed a video inside an almost completely empty hospital and posted it online.  The clip shows the woman walking through virtually empty corridors and filming empty wards at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.  "This is a disgrace... it is so dead... all the people in our country desperately waiting for treatment, cancer treatment heart disease, honestly this is making me so angry," she states as she films a row of empty waiting chairs.  The woman expressed shock at how quiet the hospital was, saying she expected there to be "a few more people around, there's absolutely nobody."  [Video clip] [...] While the footage shows the inside of the hospital to be virtually empty, UK health authorities have continually asserted that the NHS is at risk of being "overwhelmed" as a result of rising COVID-19 infections.

Consultant anaesthetist [fired] for beating his 10-year-old son gets [his] NHS job back.  A consultant anaesthetist who was struck off after he beat his ten-year-old son with an aluminium broom handle has got his NHS job back after he blamed his conduct on his 'cultural upbringing' in Nigeria.  Dr Adekunle Okunuga, 59, caned his young son with the kitchen brush for misbehaving at school and made him perform squat thrusts and stand on one leg with his arms in the air while he kicked him.  During the assault, he also caned the boy's open palms with a walking stick before finally stopping when he saw his son's blood spatter over the kitchen floor.

The Canadian Health Care Myth.  [Scroll down]  The myth of free healthcare is that the care you get now will continue, but it will be "free."  Advocates of socialized medicine aren't interested in telling the truth about what will really happen when care is rationed, treatments are discouraged, and doctors and nurses become disillusioned and quit, leaving fewer health care providers to meet skyrocketing demand.  We think that Canada, which is just as modern and civilized as the United States, must have figured this all out, because a modern citizenry expects modern care.  Yet, they don't have it, because socialism cares nothing for modernity.  Despite having imposed government control over medical care, it is still an environment that is subject to supply and demand.  This reality is further exacerbated when one contemplates not only socialized medicine for a country the size of the United States, but the open borders that every Democrat candidate for president proudly demands.  Canada strictly controls its borders, is a fraction the population of the Unites States, and is failing its citizens completely.

Great Ormond Street worker, 36, sues children's hospital claiming colleagues bullied her for being a Christian.  A Great Ormond Street worker is suing the children's hospital as she claims colleagues bullied her for being a Christian and called her a 'stupid northerner,' and a 'silly white b----'.  Catherine Maughan, a former data manager, is suing the children's hospital, claiming sex, race and religious discrimination.  The 36-year-old, from Middlesbrough, told an employment tribunal how staff at the hospital told her not to drink after work because it would offend Muslims, kicked her in a lift, and subjected her to racial slurs and threatening behaviour.

Britain's health services will not give non-emergency care to non-woke people.  The largest cohort of people treated in any medical system is the elderly.  In England, beginning in April, those elderly had better watch their mouths, or they're going to find themselves denied the health care they paid for with their taxes.  The problem with socialized medicine is that when it runs out of money (as it invariably does), the system has no alternative but to start rationing.  Britain, which is saddled with the National Health Service, long ago began contemplating death panels.  For example, Baroness Warnock, a well known British medical ethicist (hah!), suggested denying all care to elderly people with dementia.  In Liverpool, the NHS began stealth death panels that massively over-identified elderly people as being near death, justifying palliative care, and then drugged and dehydrated them to make those fake diagnoses a reality.  By 2012, a doctor estimated that the NHS was killing around 130,000 elderly patients a year because of management difficulties or bed shortages.

UK: Hospitals to Deny Care to "Racist" or "Homophobic" Patients.  Patients deemed to be "racist" or "homophobic" will be denied care in NHS Trust hospitals under new rules set to take effect in April.  "Currently, staff can refuse to treat non-critical patients who are verbally aggressive or physically violent towards them," reports Sky News.  "But these protections will extend to any harassment, bullying or discrimination, including homophobic, sexist or racist remarks."  Police will also be given new powers to prosecute "hate crimes" committed against NHS staff.  What is determined to be "racist" or "homophobic" is anyone's guess, since many elderly patients will be totally unfamiliar with modern politically correct speech codes and could be deemed to have behaved in a racist or homophobic way even if they didn't maliciously intend to.

I Left England Because of Socialized Medicine.  My Life Depended on It.  It was a Friday.  After work, I walked into an urgent care clinic to set up an appointment with a neurologist.  I knew how easy it is in the United States to see a doctor, so I thought this would be no different.  I would go in, get a recommendation, and walk out with a name and number to call on Monday for an appointment possibly in two weeks' time.  Sadly, that was not the case.  The doctor said, verbatim:  "I can recommend a neurologist for you.  I will say, she's pretty booked so you won't see her for at least nine months."

Coping With the NHS: A (Very) Personal Story.  It was a few hours after an operation on my sinuses, my first experience of hospital surgery for many years.  All had gone swimmingly well, but, for some peculiar reason, I just couldn't urinate.  And I couldn't be discharged until I did.  Clearly, I was letting people down and holding others up, and the nurses outside my door were discussing it all and wondering what to do next.  In my defense, a general anesthetic can do weird things to you.  For example, it seems that a lot of people feel nauseated afterward and start vomiting, or get dizzy and confused, or suffer muscle aches and chills.  Then there are more serious outcomes:  One in 19,000 patients experiences "intraoperative awareness" — the horrifying condition of being conscious during the procedure and feeling acute pain but being unable to signal anything to the surgeon.  Worse still, about one in every 100,000 people fails to wake up at all.  In the case of my operation, there was also an outside chance that I'd lose my eyesight, suffer brain damage, or contract meningitis.

It's a Good Thing I Don't Live in the Country with the 'Best Medical Care'.  [Scroll down]  I do not understand how any voter can consider electing someone who threatens to destroy the health care we now enjoy.  Medicare for all will eliminate private insurance and these moronic politicians also want to give illegal immigrants, who have no right being here to begin with, all the same benefits.  Open borders are just plain suicidal.  Speaking of that horrible word; there has been a rash of suicides in Britain of nurses who are overwhelmed by the NHS with long hours, low pay and shortage of qualified staff.  The NHS is dealing with an average of 1388 patients every three minutes.  Bernie Sanders and the other 2020 candidates expect taxpayers to empty their pockets for their utopian dream that simply will never exist.

Stick a fork in Liz Warren, Medicare-for-All has cooked her.  If Medicare-for-All is implemented, wave goodbye to consumer choice and say hello to rationed care and longer wait times to get medical treatment and prescription drugs.  But don't take my word for it, take a glimpse at how socialized medicine is working in neighboring Canada.  Last year the Fraser Institute, an independent Canadian think tank, reported the median wait time to see a general practitioner is 8.7 weeks.  To see a specialist is an additional 11 weeks.  That's nearly 20 weeks before a Canadian citizen can get the care they need.  Now consider if you or a loved one has a life-threatening illness like cancer where the disease will likely advance while waiting months before the bureaucracy hopefully signs off on treatment.

America Is Out-Performing The "Medical Paradise" Of Canada In Procedure Wait Times.  In the course of every debate about Medicare in the United States, someone on the left will eventually bring up Canada.  Glorious Canada, where medicine flows freely down panacea rivers and Canadians don't have to pay a dime for it.  Only none of that is true.  It's a horrendous healthcare system with horrible wait times, excessive costs via taxes, and you're forced to pay for everybody's bad decisions in regard to how they lived their life.  Regardless of this being the reality, leftists like Sen. Bernie Sanders will tell you how much better Canada's healthcare system is as opposed to America where, from the sounds of it, we have people dying in the streets over it.  This is odd, seeing as how in Canada you may be waiting quite a bit for care once it's proven that you need it.

Two year waiting times for NHS gender identity clinics, amid unprecented demand.  Record demand for help from NHS gender identity clinics has seen waiting times reach more than two years, an investigation has found.  Services said an "unprecedented rise in referrals" meant the time to see a specialist had doubled within a year at Britain's main centre.  The figures show more than 5,700 people waiting for a first appointment at Tavistock and Portman Foundation Trust, an all-time high.  Less than a year ago, its average waiting time was just over 12 months.

Christian Doctor Refuses To Call 6-Foot-Tall Bearded Man "Madam."  Instantly Loses His Job.  Dr. David Mackareth, a Christian doctor residing in the U.K. has lost his job after he stood on his principles and refused to call a 6-foot-tall bearded man "madam," stating he couldn't do so in good conscience due to his beliefs.  This is the kind of insanity the world is embracing right now.  Sooner or later the bubble is going to burst and we'll all wake up from this nightmare and sanity will be restored.

Doctor loses government job after refusing to 'call any 6-foot-tall bearded man "madam"'.  The 56-year-old physician, who was working as a disability benefits assessor for the Department of Work and Pensions, reports that a superior asked him, "If you have a man 6 foot tall with a beard who says he wants to be addressed as 'she' and 'Mrs.,' would you do that?"  According to the outlet, Mackereth — a 30-year veteran of the health care industry — said that he would not use transgender pronouns and insisted that the concept of transgenderism is a "delusional belief" that he "disbelieve[s] and detest[s]."  Mackereth — who now works as an emergency doctor in Shropshire — said that he was previously warned that he was discriminating against people by invalidating their preferred gender pronouns and that he could eventually lose his job as a result if he did not call transgender people by their preferred names.

Great-nephew of NHS founder Nye Bevan died from lung cancer after a series of blunders at two hospitals, inquest hears.  The great-nephew of NHS founder Nye Bevan died after a series of blunders at two hospitals treating him for lung cancer, it emerged last night.  Roderick Bevan died because doctors at both trusts failed to tell him he had the disease or treat it.  By the time they realised their mistake, in January last year, the condition was terminal and he could not be saved.  A coroner has ruled that the blunders amounted to neglect, and Mr Bevan, a retired caretaker, would have survived had he received radiotherapy.

British Doctor Under Investigation for Praying With Patients.  A British doctor is under investigation because an atheist organization lodged a hearsay complaint about his praying with a patient.  Dr. Richard Scott, 58, a general practitioner and partner in Bethesda Medical Center in Margate, England, stands accused of having made a "highly vulnerable" patient feel "discomfort at the use of prayer," according to the complaint, which is based on an account provided to the National Secular Society (NSS) by an alleged acquaintance of the patient.  "The acquaintance told the NSS that the patient felt unable to express discomfort and was not able to raise the matter formally or change GP practice," said the group.

Democrats' promise of Medicare for All is remarkably misguided and unrealistic.  [Scroll down]  Take Canada's single-payer program, which is one of the closest models to Medicare for all and is also called Medicare.  It doesn't cover vision, dental, long-term care or prescription drugs.  As a result, two-thirds of Canadians buy private plans.  And about 15 percent of the nation's health costs are paid out of pocket.  In the United Kingdom, nearly 11 percent of Brits buy private insurance, despite the country's single-payer National Health Service.  They do so, as the Commonwealth Fund put it, to get "more rapid and convenient access to care" than they can through the government-run program.  Britain is actually moving in the opposite direction of Medicare for All advocates.  As the NHS suffers chronic shortages, lengthy delays and treatment denials, the country's private health care market has been growing rapidly.

British judge orders disabled 22-week pregnant woman to have abortion.  A British judge ordered Friday that an abortion be performed on a mentally disabled woman who is 22 weeks pregnant, despite objections from the woman and her mother.  Justice Nathalie Lieven admits in the ruling of the "heartbreaking" case that it's an "immense intrusion" to order the abortion against the woman's will, but argued that it's in the best interest of the woman.

It's Time to Give Up on Britain's National Health Service.  Our National Health Service just turned 70! According to a recent article in The Guardian by Polly Toynbee, The NHS is our religion in the UK and that's why the conservative government can't destroy it.  Of course, the Conservative government have never actually tried to destroy the NHS.  They haven't even reduced the amount spent on the NHS. They haven't even halted increases in healthcare spending.  The only thing they have done is reduced the rate at which spending is going to continue to increase.

'Most Chilling Thing': Doctors Look To Starve People.  Only days after a British court authorized doctors and family members of seriously brain-injured patients to decide to starve them to death, a proposal has been submitted by the British Medical Association to extend the authorization to those with dementia or other degenerative diseases.  According to the Christian Institute, the proposal from the BMA would extend to doctors the right to withhold food and water from patients who still could live for years.  They would do that by calling food and water "medical treatments."  The BMA plan states the options should apply to patients with recognized degenerative conditions "such as advanced dementia, Parkinson's or Huntington's disease or stroke patients with 'rapidly progressive brain injury."  The idea drew immediate horror from people who have been incapacitated at times but have recovered.

Wasting Lives:  A statistical analysis of NHS performance in a European context since 1981.

Health Care Startups Struggle to Woo UK's National Health Service.  The Health Foundry is just one element of a thriving U.K. ecosystem serving entrepreneurs and startups in the health sector.  It has 170 members across 120 companies and is the U.K.'s only co-working space dedicated to digital health, says Sinead Mac Manus, its startup and innovation manager.  It also helps guide startups through the labyrinthine processes of NHS purchasing decisions.

Just 1,800 out of 110,000 occupied beds are taken up by Covid-19 patients.  Covid-19 patients are currently occupying fewer than 2 percent of all hospital beds in England, official data suggests.  The most NHS recent snapshot — released three weeks ago — shows just 478 out of 110,000 beds in use were by Covid-19 patients on September 3.  This has since risen to 1,883, according to Department of Health data.  Health chiefs have yet to update the total beds occupied figure since but it barely changed over the summer.

The fraying edges of universal health care.  If you're wondering what Democrats have in mind when they tout "Medicare For All," look no further than England.  There are more reports of the U.K.'s National Health System's collapse, this time featuring horror stories of rationing care for the elderly.  Doctors are now sounding alarms bells that seniors with cataracts are going blind as they wait for surgical approval. [...] Last year, The New York Times reported some people in England were waiting for 12 hours to be seen in emergency rooms.

British Version Of Medicare For All Sees Elderly Going Blind Waiting For Surgery (But Americans Still Want To Vote For It).  British health trusts — in charge of budgets allotted from the socialized National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom — have been rationing cataract care to patients who are slowly going blind because the NHS cannot afford to provide care to them.  After a watchdog group called NICE instructed the trusts to begin offering surgery for cataracts — which reportedly afflict 4.5 million people in the UK, with many being denied surgery even with severely impaired sight — it was discovered nearly [two thirds] of the trusts had ignored the request because it was not legally binding.

Premature baby was decapitated 'when top NHS doc detached body from head during botched birth'.  A premature baby was decapitated inside his mom's womb when a doctor in Scotland detached his body from his head during a botched birth, a tribunal heard.  The hearing was told the first-time mom was then forced to undergo a C-section to remove the head — which was sewn onto the tot's body so she could hold him and say goodbye.  It is alleged Dr. Vaishnavy Laxman, 41, should have given the 30-year old patient an emergency C-section at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, as the baby was in a breech position.

Hundreds say goodbye to British toddler Alfie Evans.  Hundreds of people took to the streets of Liverpool on Monday to mourn 23-month-old Alfie Evans, who died last month following a highly-charged battle between the hospital and his parents.  The well-wishers broke into applause as the funeral cortege passed Everton football club's Goodison Park stadium, on its way to a private burial nearby.

No Autopsy Will be Done on Alfie Evans Before He's Buried Despite Controversy Surrounding His Death.  The final days and weeks of the life of Alfie Evans were an international spectacle.  As his parents battled with a children's hospital and court system intent on revoking his life support and ending his life, their fight to save Alfie became an international news event.  As Alfie's parents announced this week, a private funeral will be held next week for their son.  But amazingly, despite all of the international hoopla, attention, and controversy surrounding his death, there will be no investigation or autopsy it appears.  Although supporters of Alfie Evans and his family expected an autopsy immediately after his death, it appears there will be no autopsy — according to multiple sources LifeNews has spoken with.  And, strangely, there have been absolutely no mainstream media news stories even about the possibility of an autopsy or investigation following Alfie's death.  Nothing was mentioned in the British media — who have covered the case extensively — in their reports on the upcoming funeral.

UK Doctor Sacked For Blasphemy.  In the UK, the National Health Service has thrown out a doctor:  ["]A doctor has been 'sacked' as a medical assessor for a government department after refusing to renounce his Christian belief that gender is determined at birth, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal. [...] The 55-year-old father of four believes sex is genetic and biological, so established at birth.["]  Wait a minute.  Holding the view that people are born male or female is now a theological belief?  Do you see how radical this is?  Here's the theology angle:  this doctor was fired because he blasphemed against the militant new religion.

Baby Alfie, the Latest Victim of Omnipotent Government.  Twenty-three-month-old Alfie Evans, passed away in a British hospital on Saturday.  While the official cause of death was a degenerative brain disease, Alfie may have been murdered by the British health system and the British high court.  Doctors at the hospital treating Alfie decided to remove his life support, against the wishes of Alfie's parents.  The high court not only upheld the doctors' authority to override the parents' wishes, it refused to allow the parents to take Alfie abroad for treatment.  In upholding the government's authority to substitute its judgment for that of Alfie's parents, the high court is following in the footsteps of authoritarians throughout history.  Ever since Plato, supporters of big government have sought to put government in charge of raising children.  The authoritarianism of a system where "experts" can override parents is underscored by a police warning that they were "monitoring" social media posts regarding Alfie.  Alfie's case is not just an example of the dangers of allowing government to usurp parental authority or the failures of socialized medicine.  It shows the logical result of the widespread acceptance of the idea that rights are mere privileges bestowed by government.  It follows from this idea that rights can be taken away whenever demanded by government officials or the popular will.

The country that killed Alfie left behind Lewis, Wilberforce, Wesley.  Make no mistake, says a longtime conservative activist, post-Christian Britain is to blame for the death of Alfie Evans.  Suffering from a degenerative brain condition, Alfie Evans died earlier this month just a few days shy of what would have been his second birthday.  His parents had been in a lengthy legal battle with British doctors who, over the parents objections, removed the young boy's oxygen, and food and water, after courts ruled in the hospital's favor.

Alfie Evans' case shows that basic English rights are at risk.  "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" are the rights singled out by Thomas Jefferson as those most deserving the protection of government as he and his fellow founders sought to recover the 'rights of Englishmen' of which they felt they were being deprived.  This makes it more than ironic that those rights no longer exist in the country of England, where two very young children no longer have life, after their parents had their liberty taken away and were deprived of the happiness that preserving their children's lives had brought.

Toddler whose parents fought to maintain life support dies.  Alfie Evans, a sick British toddler whose parents won support from the pope during a protracted legal battle to take him to the Vatican children's hospital for treatment, died early Saturday [4/28/2018], five days after he was taken off life support.

Alfie Evans is condemned to die at 23 months because of Britain's scary secular state.  The British government's decision to allow two critically ill babies to die in two years is a natural reflection of the culture of death and the steady increase in totalitarian tendencies among Western governments.  Last year, the British government ordered life support removed from Charlie Gard, ending his life when he was just 11 months old.  Now, Alfie Evans — just 23 months old — has received what amounts to the same death sentence.  On Monday, he was removed from life support by court order — against the wishes of his parents.

Single Payer And The Alfie Evans Nightmare Go Hand In Hand.  Bernie Sanders and many of his fellow Democrats pushing single payer endlessly claim that health care is a "basic human right." What they never mention is that gaining that one means sacrificing many other rights.  Just ask the parents of Alfie Evans.  Alfie died this week in a British hospital after a series of events that, if they'd happened here, would be a serious breakdown in our nation's health care system and of parental rights.

How did Britain justify ending Alfie Evans' life?  Tom Evans, with his head hung low, looked only once at the camera Thursday as he read a prepared statement asking supporters of his ailing son Alfie to "stand down." Evans wanted to deescalate the tension so he and Alfie's mother, Kate James, could "build a bridge" with the Liverpool, England, hospital seeking the end of their toddler's life.  Evans' strong Liverpudlian accent had previously tumbled out fiery defenses of his son's right to life and criticisms of court rulings against him.  For months, Evans and James fought a system that decided at the highest level that removing the 23-month-old's life support was in his "best interest," ultimately trumping the couple's parental rights.

Britain revives the death penalty — for children.  On August 13, 1964, Britain executed Peter Anthony Allen and Gwynne Owen Evans for the murder of John Alan West.  This was supposed to be the last executions by the state in that nation.  But nearly 53 years later, Britain executed Charles Matthew William Gard.  His death was not by hanging.  They did not draw and quarter him.  The British did something far worse.  They starved him to death by denying him medical treatment because the treatment was too expensive.  Charlie was 11 months old.  His death at the hands of government come from the same people who lecture Americans on how we let people die because we don't have socialized medicine — a lie — we provide the best care for the poor through Medicaid.  The British refused to allow his parents to seek treatment in the United States.  Now the same Britons want to kill Alfie Evans, another child whose crime is costing the state to much money for medical treatment.

Terminally ill child, Alfie Evans, dies after doctors remove life support.  Alfie Evans, the sick British toddler whose parents won support from Pope Francis during a protracted legal battle over his treatment, died early Saturday.  He was 23 months old.

What Alfie's all about.  Twenty-three month old Alfie Evans was held for nearly a week without care against the will of his parents in a Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool until he died yesterday.  He could have been cared for in a Vatican hospital if the British authorities had let him go.  The British authorities denied him care to avoid his or their suffering.  The basic facts of the case are set forth by the BBC and by the Guardian.

Why Alfie Will Never Escape the NHS Alive.  Yesterday afternoon [4/26/2018], after meeting with his son's National Health Service captors ostensibly to discuss "taking Alfie home," Tom Evans shocked the boy's international army of supporters by completely reversing the position he had held since last year concerning his son's care:  "In Alfie's interests we will work with his treatment team on a plan that provides our boy with the dignity and comfort he needs."  You will note those words, "Alfie's interests."  This is the euphemism that has been used by the NHS, the British courts, and supporters of socialized medicine everywhere to justify the state's right kill Alfie Evans.  Neither of Alfie's parents had ever used this term in this way in the past.  Before Tom Evans went into that meeting, he vowed to continue fighting the malign medical and political system whose incompetence and tyranny he had exposed to the world.  But after the discussion he had, like Orwell's Winston Smith, learned to love Big Brother.

Pro-Life Leader:  Alfie Evans Was "Sentenced to Death." We Can Never Let It Happen Again.  The head of an American pro-life organization is speaking out today [4/30/2018] in the wake of Alfie Evans' death over the weekend.  Alfie died on Saturday less than a week after hospital officials yanked his life support without his parents' permission.  Today, Carol Tobias, the president of the National Right to Life Committee, told LifeNews that people need to be very clear about what happened with Alfie.  She says he was "sentenced to death" by courts and doctors.  She says what happened to Alfie and his parents needs to never happen to get to any other child or patient.  Alfie Evans ended up dying very early Saturday morning after the children's hospital that was supposed to provide him with appropriate medical care and treatment disconnected his life support without his parents' permission.

Alfie Evans Is Just the Latest Victim of a Deadly NHS Hospital.  The Alfie Evans outrage occurred in an NHS hospital with a long record of clinical negligence, including the worst scandal in the history of Britain's National Health Service.  Most of the media have covered Alfie's case, with characteristic dishonesty, as a tragedy that began before the boy was taken to Alder Hey Children's Hospital.  But, according to the court testimony of the NHS physicians who admitted Alfie, his initial diagnosis involved a fairly common condition: "viral bronchiolitis and a possible prolonged febrile convulsion."  The still-undiagnosed brain disease that allegedly killed Alfie didn't appear until after he entered this dangerous hospital.

Alfie Evans Priest Reportedly Kicked Out Of Hospital For Telling Them God Was Watching.  Not welcome at Alder Hey Hospital is apparently common sense, empathy, and now God.  According to the Life Site, an Italian newspaper claims that an Italian priest sent to look over baby Alfie Evans, who is currently fighting for his life despite the doctors' best hopes that he'd have died by now.  The priest had been sent to tend to Alfie but, according to Life Site, the priest reminded the staff that their actions against Alfie would be seen by God, and apparently, the hospital staff wasn't too into that.

The United Kingdom, Socialism, and the Dignity of Life.  The United Kingdom, a nation once revered for its promotion of individual freedom and the promulgation of limited government throughout the world, has accepted, as a governing principle, the foundation of Marxist philosophy:  the individual human being is the property of the state.

Alfie Evans, the State, and Us.  It is the war between Western, liberal Judeo-Christian values and the values of leftism.  It's a war between the individual as the focus of our lives and culture and the big state as the focus.  Just look at the stark realities that have played out in England.  Its health care system is now completely absorbed by the state.  (Ours is well on the way.)  The focus was the state, faceless, unaccountable, a massive bureaucracy armed with tremendous power shared with the politicians up in their distant offices, the unelected judges with their lifetime appointments, and the government employee doctors all on one side, and the individuals — Mom, Dad, and the baby — on the other.  Who do you suppose won this give-and-take, this health care transaction?

Alfie and Haleigh and Charlie and Jahi.  When British hospital officials tried to pull the plug on 23-month-old toddler Alfie Evans on Monday night in arrogant defiance of his parents' wishes, many Americans took to Twitter to count their blessings that they live in a country that would not allow such tyranny. [...] Alfie's plight comes less than a year after another British baby boy with a rare genetic condition, Charlie Gard, was taken off life support after his parents lost a similar battle with judges and medical officials.

Let Alfie Evans Go to Rome.  Alfie Evans, 23 months old, is hospitalized with a rare neurodegenerative disorder.  Against his parents' wishes, his doctors at Alder Hey Hospital in Liverpool removed him from life support on Monday evening [4/23/2018], maintaining that further treatment would be futile.  Bambino Gesù Pediatric Hospital in Rome has offered to treat him and arranged for his medical transport, which is on standby.  The Italian government has granted him citizenship, clearing legal and administrative hurdles in advance.  Doctors in Liverpool forbid the child to be removed from their watch, however, and British courts have backed them up, holding out the possibility that at some point the parents will be permitted to take him home to die, but batting down the idea that he will ever be allowed to leave the country.  The courts have offered no compelling or even plausible reason for blocking his transfer to the Italian hospital.

Alfie Evans Must Die So the Nanny State May Live.  In case you've missed it, Alfie Evans is a chronically ill British child whose parents want to remove him from a Liverpool hospital to try alternative treatments.  And the hospital is defying them.  Denying him further treatment.  Leaving him to die.

UK Government Seeks to Play God in Denying Alfie Evans Life Support.  A parent would go to the ends of the earth for their child.  But what if the government forcibly stopped them?  What if, instead, the government doggedly pursued their child's death?  Such has been the tragic story of Thomas Evans and Kate James, and their son, Alfie Evans.  It's a chilling reminder of what happens when the government attempts to be doctor and to play God.

British Doctor:  Alfie Evans Must Die Because His Parents Have A Bad Attitude.  A British doctor treating Alfie Evans told reporters off the record his parents won't be allowed to take their child out of the hospital, even to die at home, unless there is a "sea change" in their attitude.  Alfie's parents are battling the hospital and the government of the United Kingdom to continue caring for their little boy, who is suffering from an undiagnosed condition that British doctors say has rendered him terminally ill.  Although he was taken off life support Monday night [4/23/2018], Alfie has continued to live with the help of an oxygen tank.  The courts have ruled his parents cannot take him out of the country, and have allowed the hospital to keep Alfie in their "care" by force.

Great Moments In Single Payer:  Britain Cancels 50,000 Surgeries.  Consider this another data point that will largely get ignored when Democrats and the media start beating the drum again on "Medicare for All" in the 2018 midterms.  The UK's vaunted single-payer system has collapsed into "third world" conditions, thanks to a lack of resources that has ambulances unable to pick up patients, who would find difficulty in getting an empty bed at a hospital.  The order came down this week from on high to cancel as many as 50,000 scheduled surgeries over the next several weeks until the National Health Service can figure out how to climb out of the hole.

Britain's NHS Holds Another Baby Hostage.  In most hostage situations involving a child, the police surround the building in which the victim is being held and try to convince the kidnapper not to carry out his death threats.  In the case of Alfie Evans, a toddler being held captive by Britain's National Health Service (NHS), the situation is perversely reversed.  The police are standing guard outside Alfie's room so the child's parents cannot take him to another hospital.  Alfie's captors, the administrators of Alder Hey Children's Hospital, have obtained a court order allowing them to withdraw life support — though he hasn't been diagnosed as terminally ill.  That's the crucial difference between Alfie's case and the Charlie Gard tragedy.

British Courts Again Rule Against Parents Trying to Save Gravely Ill Child.  The horror of last summer's Charlie Gard story apparently wasn't an exception in the world of British socialized medicine:  CBS News reports that 23-month-old Alfie Evans's parents have been fighting a "a protracted legal fight with Alder Hey Children's Hospital" regarding their son's treatment.  Just as in the Charlie Gard case, Alfie's parents wanted to take him out of England to try alternative.  And, just as in the Gard case, the British courts have decided that they and the hospital knew better than the child's parents.

Trump's Right:  The UK's Health System Is Broke And Failing.  Amid the news crush of the week, it would have been easy to miss President Trump's tweet blasting Britain's National Health Service.  As with everything else he does or says, Trump managed to get people riled up.  This time, it was for telling the truth.

UK NHS Patient Asks for Female Nurse for Cervical Smear, Gets Tattooed Trans Man With Stubble.  A woman who requested a female nurse for an intimate procedure was given an "obviously male" member of staff with stubble and tattoos, who claimed to be a transsexual.  The National Health Service (NHS) patient said she was "embarrassed and distressed" when summoned by a nurse with "an obviously male appearance ... close-cropped hair, a male facial appearance and voice, large number of tattoos and facial stubble" to carry out a cervical smear, The Times reports.  When she pointed out what she thought was a mistake, the nurse told her off:  "My gender is not male.  I'm a transsexual."

NHS waiting times crisis.  Just one hospital in England has hit its targets for cancer, operations and accident and emergency over the past year, it was claimed today [10/18/2017].  Growing demand is leaving the NHS struggling to serve patients, with Luton and Dunstable NHS Trust in Bedfordshire the only service to have achieved its goals.  England, Wales and Northern Ireland have not hit any of their three targets for 18 months, while Scotland has only had success with its A&E goal in the last year.

Hang on a moment...hasn't Donald Trump got a point about the NHS failings?  The British are convinced the NHS is the best healthcare system known to man.  It is the ultimate sacred cow — to be worshipped and revered and, of course, regularly fed with great wads of cash.  So when a few days ago Donald Trump fired off a tweet about the NHS 'going broke and not working' everyone jumped down his throat. [...] But hang on a moment.  Hasn't it been pretty clear during the past few weeks that the NHS is in a serious crisis?

Winter crisis cripples the NHS: Up to 55,000 operations are postponed.  Hospitals were last night ordered to cancel thousands of operations to try to tackle a winter health crisis.  In an unprecedented move, NHS chiefs demanded radical action to free up beds and medical staff.  Casualty units are under 'extreme and sustained' pressure with flu cases on the rise.  Up to 55,000 non-urgent operations will be postponed until February, along with thousands of outpatient appointments and scans.  Managers will be allowed to put patients on mixed-sex wards and consultants will be assigned to casualty units to assess patients on arrival.  Anyone not judged to be seriously ill faces being turned away.

Death Panels:  Socialized Medicine Ban for Surgery for Smoke and the Overweight.  Aren't you just sick of corporations deciding what treatment you can get?  We should just have national health care, Medicare-for-All, socialized medicine.  And then everyone can get all the care they want without paying anything.  Here's how it's working out in the UK where survival rates for many diseases are much worse than in America.  And where a hospital can order a baby killed.  And no surgery if you smoke or are overweight.

Charlie Gard Dies After Life Support is Switched Off.  Charlie Gard has passed away after his life support was switched off today.  His parents said in a post on social media that "our beautiful boy" is gone.  Charlie was at the center of a massive international debate after the hospital where he was receiving treatment for a rare disease refused to allow an experimental treatment to help him and also refused transferring him to another hospital that would allow the treatment.  Charlie's parents took their fight to numerous courts to protect his life but to no avail.  Each of the courts and a British judge argued that it was in Charlie's best interest to be removed from the life support.

Charlie Gard Has Passed Away.  Some sad news to report:  Charlie Gard, the terminally-ill baby who was the center of a controversy regarding parental rights and experimental treatment, has passed away in a hospice after his life support machine was withdrawn on Friday [7/28/2017].  He would have turned one on August 4.

22-Week-Old Baby Died After Hospital Refused to Treat Him Because He Was Severely Premature.  In South Wales, the chief executive of Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, Adam Caims, has personally apologized to a grieving mother who lost her premature infant because medical staff refused to treat him.  In December 2013, Riley Goodger died 90 minutes after his mother, Emma Jones, had given birth at Cardiff's University Hospital.  Initially, Goodger was breathing on his own but medical personnel said they were unable to help him because he was only 22-weeks-old.  Currently in Wales, that is eight days before the abortion cut-off and life-saving measures aren't usually taken unless a baby is born after 24-weeks.

The latest outrage in the Baby Charlie case.  If there's one thing that has marked the struggle of Chris Gard and Connie Yates, the parents of Charlie Gard, it is the almost inhuman indifference to the plight of the parents by the Great Ormand Street Hospital, who insist that the parents should have no hope of improvement in their son and acquiesce in his death.  The latest outrage by the hospital is incomprehensible.  At a hearing in the family division of Great Britain's High Court, attorneys for the hospital presented the judge with the latest scan of Charlie's brain.  But the hospital had failed to share the scan first with Charlie's parents.  This proved too much for them and they stormed out of the courtroom.

Baby Charlie Shows The System For The Monster It Really Is.  "The System" raised its brutal fist in the face of the world from Britain today.  It conceded, not in words, but in action how the parents of Charlie Gard had run out of time to secure outside help in trying to keep their baby alive.  The System proved its terrible might in demonstrating to a World On Watch how it is impossible for a vulnerable baby and his parents to survive after hitting the brick and mortar of its imperious walls.  Those who can plainly see how cheaply a progressive world values human life, join Charlie's parents in their heartbreak.

Secret NHS cuts will cause uproar once revealed, doctors claim.  Doctors have warned that plans for "brutal" NHS cuts are shrouded in secrecy and will cause uproar once revealed.  The British Medical Association (BMA) says health service leaders have refused to publish details of the proposals that could extend waiting times, reduce access to services, cut down on prescriptions and treatments, and even merge or close hospitals and facilities.

Charlie Gard will not make it to his first birthday as parents end legal fight over treatment.  harlie Gard's parents accused Great Ormond Street Hospital of delaying treatment until it was too late as they gave up their legal fight to save "their warrior son".  Charlie's life support will be switched off in the coming days after his parents dropped a court battle for the right to take him to New York for experimental therapy.  Connie Yates, Charlie's mother, told the court that her "sweet, gorgeous, innocent little boy" will not now live to see his first birthday in less than two weeks' time.

NHS doctors use Snapchat to send patients' scans.  NHS doctors are using Snapchat to send patient scans to one another, according to a new report that warns it is an "insecure, risky" way of working.  A panel of experts, chaired by former Liberal Democrat MP Dr Julian Huppert, said the NHS was letting the digital revolution pass it by, forcing medics to find their own "technical fixes".  The report also revealed that the NHS is the world's largest purchaser of fax machines, described by the authors as a "dubious title" to hold.

Charlie Gard's parents walk out of hearing on treatment options.  An American doctor offering to treat critically-ill baby Charlie Gard may come to the UK to examine his condition more closely, a court case over the baby's future has heard.  A High Court hearing is deciding whether the 11-month-old should be given experimental treatment for a severe degenerative genetic disorder which had left him with brain damage.  A US expert today [7/13/2017] claimed there was a 10% chance that treatment could have "clinically meaningful success" — but admitted he had not seen the baby's full medical notes and had never examined him.

Charlie Gard parents end legal fight as time runs out for 'beautiful' baby.  The parents of terminally ill baby Charlie Gard have ended their legal challenge to take him to the US for experimental treatment.  A lawyer representing Chris Gard and Connie Yates told the High Court "time had run out" for the baby.  Mr Gard said it meant his "sweet, gorgeous, innocent little boy" will not reach his first birthday on 4 August.  "To let our beautiful little Charlie go" is "the hardest thing we'll ever have to do", his mother said.

Charlie Gard:  It Can't Happen Here — or Can It?  Charlie Gard has, in effect, been medically kidnapped by the socialist National Health Service bureaucracy that has lined up with the British medical establishment to assert the primacy of the state's rights over the parents' rights to determine the fate of a minor child.  In Britain, the state essentially owns the child, and the experience faced by Charlie Gard and his parents has brought that outrageous situation clearly to light.

Charlie Gard:  US doctor claims he can achieve 10% improvement for baby.  An American doctor offering to treat terminally ill Charlie Gard has told the High Court there is a 10% chance he could improve the baby's condition.  The 11-month-old has a rare genetic disorder and severe brain damage which doctors at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) had said was irreversible.  In April, the High Court ruled that life support should be removed to enable Charlie to die with dignity.  The doctor has agreed to assess Charlie in the UK if the court adjourns.

Judge Rules Against London Hospital — In Favor of Charlie Gard's Parents.  A judge at London's High Court ruled against the hospital and in favor of the parents of baby Charlie Gard — who is suffering from a rare genetic disorder — that they may present new scientific evidence concerning their son's treatment, which will be reviewed this Thursday and could possibly lead to Charlie receiving treatment in the United States.  But the outcome is still uncertain and Charlie's fate is precarious.

ITV News reveals scale of NHS vacancies that threatens closed wards and cancelled operations.  An ITV News investigation has revealed the scale of vacancies in NHS hospitals stretching across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland.  Some hospitals reported more than 1,000 vacancies with the biggest gaps, at every trust, in nursing.  Others admitted crucial roles have remained unfilled for years, despite repeated advertising.  ITV News asked every acute trust in the country to disclose how many staff posts were vacant.  In total 92 trusts responded to our Freedom of Information request.

Charlie Gard Is the Face of Single-Payer.  When Charlie Gard entered Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, England's single-payer health system, the National Health Service, took over.  At first, it seemed that this was a good thing, since his parents didn't have to pay extra for his care.  But they didn't have a choice.  They weren't in the small minority who are either wealthy enough or favorably employed to access private insurance.  So Charlie was swallowed by the Blob.

The Fight for Charlie Gard's Life:  Maybe Doctors Aren't Right.  Charlie Gard's parents are embroiled in the fight for their son's life and — importantly — the fight for their right to be parents.  Diagnosed with a rare mitochondrial disease, a condition that disables the cells of the body from functioning adequately, little Charlie — who is not yet a year old — has been on life support.  And the British courts, not his parents, are assuming responsibility for his life.

Worst media moments of the week.  The case of 11-month-old Charlie Gard is every parent's nightmare.  The child has "a rare genetic condition that has damaged his brain and left him unable to breathe without assistance," according to Fox News.  British authorities have refused to follow the parents' wishes to let them transport him to the United States for experimental treatments.  They didn't just give him a death sentence.  They said they get to decide what happens, not his parents.  ABC, CBS and NBC didn't care about the story, though American conservatives were up in arms about it.  None of the three networks mentioned the case.

The Charlie Gard Case and Its Obvious Implications.  Most of the people following the macabre case of Charlie Gard were relieved when the British hospital holding the child hostage decided to let the 11-month old live until it has conferred with Perfidious Albion's High Court.  In a statement issued Friday [7/7/2017], Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) added that it had condescended to inform Charlie's parents of the decision, "and will continue to keep them fully appraised of the situation."  In a sane world most observers would shout, "What [if anything] does the court system have to do with this kid's care and why are his parents treated as mere bystanders?"

What Kind of a Nation Would Kill a Baby in His Mother's Arms?  Charlie Gard is eleven months old.  He has a rare brain disease.  There is a chance that his life could be saved — at a hospital in America — a hospital that could provide an experimental treatment.  Charlie's mom and dad raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the journey.  But the British courts said no — a judge ruled that doctors could take the little boy off life support without parental consent.  The doctors say the there is no hope — Charlie cannot breath [sic] on his own — and he has brain damage.  And they say the boy's parents have no right to determine his fate.  Charlie's mom and dad are devastated.

New York hospital agrees to admit Charlie Gard.  A New York City hospital has offered to help Charlie Gard, a terminally ill British 11-month-old who U.K. and European courts have prevented from being treated abroad.  Gard suffers from a rare genetic condition that has left him brain damaged and unable to breathe on his own.  His parents tried to bring him to the U.S. for an experimental treatment, but that effort that was blocked by the courts after doctors said it would not help him.

Doctors Back NHS-Funded 'Womb Transplants' for Transgender People.  Leading doctors have said they back NHS-funded womb transplants for biological males who identify as women, a procedure which experts say will be possible within 10 years.  It is believed that medical funding and advances will make the procedure possible within a decade, after pioneering operations at the University of Gothenburg on womb-less women have seen at least five children born as a result of a procedure similar to the one doctors are working towards.

Two House Members to Introduce Legislation to Help Charlie Gard.  Lawmakers are planning to introduce legislation next week to grant lawful permanent residence to a terminally ill infant.  "Our bill will support Charlie's parents' right to choose what is best for their son, by making Charlie a lawful permanent resident in the U.S. in order for him to receive treatments that could save his life," Reps.  Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, and Trent Franks, R-Ariz., said in a joint statement Friday [7/7/2017].  Charlie is an 11-month-old British baby with an uncommon genetic condition that keeps him from breathing without help.  He is also deaf and blind, according to USA Today.

Five World Specialists Recommend Charlie Gard Receive Experimental Treatment.  The parents of Charlie Gard are begging British Prime Minister Theresa May to make good on her statement to Parliament that she was confident the hospital which is determined to remove Charlie's life support "always will consider any offers or new information that has come forward with consideration of the well-being of a desperately ill child."  In the UK Mail, Connie Yates and Chris Gard assert that five world specialists have recommend their baby receive the experimental treatment they have long sought.  This is in stark contrast to the official opinion of London's Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) that Charlie cannot be helped and attempts to do so could harm him.

Yanking Life Support From UK Baby Demonstrates Dangers Of Socialized Medicine.  In a heartbreaking case in the United Kingdom, Connie Yates and Chris Gard just lost their final appeal in battling for their son Charlie's life.  This means the hospital where 10-month-old Charlie has been staying since birth will now legally remove his life support, essentially euthanizing an infant against his parents' wishes.  Charlie was born last August with a rare disease, mitochondrial depletion syndrome, which causes progressive muscle weakness and brain damage.  Medical staff at the hospital believed he would not improve and it was best for Charlie to "die with dignity."  His parents did not agree, so the case went to a judge, who affirmed the hospital's recommendation.  The European Court of Human Rights concluded that the UK's decision to deny the couple's right to remove their son from the hospital to obtain care in the United States did not violate the terms of the European Convention on Human Rights.  The UK's system of socialized medicine provided the framework for the legal system to usurp these parents' rights.  It's a two-headed dragon of law and socialized medicine that could easily pair to usurp parental rights in America as well.

Court Rules To Kill Baby, Denying Parents the Right To Pay for Surgery.  Charlie Gard is a ten-month-old baby who suffers from a rare, crippling disorder called mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome.  Baby Charlie is condemned to die.  But not because of his condition.  No, Charlie will die because a judge ordered that he should.

Court Rules Hospital Can Overrule Parents and Yank Their Disabled Son's Life Support.  Charlie Gard, a little baby on life-support with a debilitating genetic disease, has lost his last court battle.  His parents' heroic battle to bring 10-month-old Charlie to the United States for an experimental medication has lost out to a London hospital evaluation that he deserves "death with dignity."  A majority of seven judges in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Tuesday rejected, as "inadmissible" the plea by Charlie's parents to overturn three rulings in the UK court system against their son.  The ECHR had agreed to intervene June 19th to maintain Charlie's life-support in the interest of preventing "imminent risk of irreparable harm."

Trump vows to help Charlie Gard, the British infant courts say should be allowed to die.  President Trump and the Vatican have spoken out in support of Charlie Gard, a terminally ill British infant whose case has captured worldwide attention after European courts decided that he could be removed from life support against his parents' wishes.  Pope Francis said on Twitter that "to defend human life, above all when it is wounded by illness, is a duty of love that God entrusts to all."  The Italian news agency ANSA reported Monday [7/3/2017] that officials at a Vatican-owned Italian hospital will ask their counterparts at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital whether 10-month-old Charlie can be moved from that facility to Rome.  On Monday [7/3/2017], Trump tweeted about the case, writing that the United States "would be delighted to" help.

State Tyranny Exposed.  The bureaucracy decided that the parents had no rights in [the Charlie Gard] case.  They had raised the money to seek experimental treatment in the United States, and the British courts decided that, even though there was no cost to the British taxpayer, the parents had no rights.  They couldn't even take their child home to die in peace with his family.  I'm sure the experimental treatment was a long shot.  It probably wouldn't have worked anyway.  But God knows, if this were my child, I'd fight to the last, to the most extreme chance possible.  The public largely agreed with them, that's how they were able to raise the donation money in the first place.  But the primacy of the State cannot be questioned by us mere peasants.

Trump seizes moral high ground in Charlie Gard case.  The infant lies dying in a government-run hospital ward and the death panels have declared that no more shall be done to save his life.  His parents want to move heaven and earth to save their child, who doctors say has brain damage after being diagnosed with infantile-onset encephalomyopathic mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome.

Mother responds to Trump's pledge to help her terminally ill son.  The mother of terminally ill British baby Charlie Gard responded to President Trump's pledge to help her son with a message of determination.  "If he's still fighting, we're still fighting," Connie Yates wrote on her Facebook in a post Monday [7/3/2017] sharing Trump's tweet.  The president offered his support for 10-month-old Charlie, who suffers from a rare condition that causes weakened muscles and organ dysfunction.

'Large number' of hospitals cancelling cancer operations.  A "large number" of hospitals are cancelling cancer operations, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons has said, revealing the depth of the NHS funding crisis.  Clare Marx said cancer surgery was no longer protected in the health service, and that hospitals had been cancelling operations since the start of the year.

New postcode lottery after cash-strapped NHS changes rules to restrict treatment.  Childless couples are facing a new postcode lottery for IVF with many now denied treatment unless they have HIV or cancer.  Cash-strapped doctors have changed the rules for fertility treatment, with some women denied the chance to have a baby except under strict medical criteria.  A North-South IVF divide now means many couples in southern England can have fertility treatment on the NHS only in 'exceptional' circumstances, such as where a man risks infecting his partner and child with HIV or where cancer treatment could leave a man or woman infertile.

Cyber attackers hold the NHS to ransom with patients turned away and operations cancelled.  The NHS has been hit by an 'unprecedented' hack that has shut down computers and cut off phone lines in a cyber attack that could 'endanger lives', doctors said today [5/12/2017].  Hackers have taken control of computers in at least 40 NHS Trusts across the country meaning doctors cannot access patients' files which are stored online.

Don't call pregnant women 'expectant mothers' as it might offend transgender people, BMA says.  The British Medical Association has said pregnant women should not be called "expectant mothers" as it could offend transgender people.  Instead, they should call them "pregnant people" so as not to upset intersex and transgender men, the union has said.  The advice comes in an internal document to staff outlining a raft of common phrases that should be avoided for fear of causing offence.

'NHS has become all-inclusive buffet' Katie Hopkins savages 'self-inflicted' health crisis.  Katie Hopkins demanded smokers, drinkers and overweight people should stop treating the NHS as an "all-inclusive" service to stop it facing financial ruin.  The outspoken LBC host also thundered that taxpayers' should not be out of pocket because of self-indulgence people who lack self-control. [...] Public Health England suggested eight in every 10 people aged 40 to 60 in England are overweight, drink too much or get too little exercise.

Rationing Health Care in Great Britain.  Back in the day, in 2009 to be precise, Paul Krugman assured us that Great Britain's National Health Service was well worth being emulated. [...] This absurd conclusion has been debunked so many times, here and elsewhere, that one questions the need to do so again.  And yet, bad ideas die hard, so here are some new "scare stories" from Great Britain.  They tell us that medical care is now being rationed, according to how overweight you are.  If you fall within the category of obesity you will be deprived certain medical procedures.  And you will also give up your right to certain kinds of medical care if you smoke.

Nigerian woman, 43, admits she can't pay £500,000 NHS bill after giving birth to IVF quadruplets.  One of the largest hospitals in the country is chasing a bill of more than £500,000 from a Nigerian woman who gave birth to quadruplets.  The 43-year-old, named only as Priscilla, went into labour three months early shortly after landing at Heathrow airport in November.  She had intended to give birth to the babies in Chicago, in the US, where she has family — but was turned away by border officials upon arrival.  They claimed that although she had a visa, she did not have required documents from a hospital stating that she had the money to pay for the birth.

Your boss is watching you:  Companies fit staff with tracking devices to they can follow their movements night and day.  Employers across Britain and North America are fitting their staff with wearable tracker devices to monitor their fitness, productivity and stress levels 24 hours a day.  At least four companies — including a major bank and part of the NHS — are using 'sociometric badges' to measure the conditions of their staff.  The credit card-sized devices created by Humanyze include a microphone that analyses the tone, speed and volume, but not the content, of a person's voice, scan for proximity to others and measure physical activity and sleep patterns.

Doctors praise DIY surgery skills of diabetic ex-soldier, 57, who chopped off his own toes with pliers after his operation was cancelled.  A diabetic former soldier used pliers to cut off his own toes after his operation was cancelled at the last minute.  Paul Dibbins, 57, had been due to have his leg removed below the knee after suffering frost bite on his feet while repairing a car in wintry conditions.  But, when the surgery was called off by the NHS, the fed up father-of-three decided to treat the condition himself.

NHS crisis plan to cancel operations and appointments as winter draws in.  Hospitals are to cancel thousands of operations and appointments in a desperate bid to stop the NHS "buckling" this winter, under Government plans.  Health officials are drawing up contingency measures to attempt to safeguard emergency care by diverting senior doctors from operating theatres into wards and Accident & Emergency departments as winter sets in.

Obese patients and smokers banned from routine surgery in 'most severe ever' rationing in the NHS.  Obese people will be routinely refused operations across the NHS, health service bosses have warned, after one authority said it would limit procedures on an unprecedented scale.  Hospital leaders in North Yorkshire said that patients with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or above — as well as smokers — will be barred from most surgery for up to a year amid increasingly desperate measures to plug a funding black hole.  The restrictions will apply to standard hip and knee operations.

Report shows mortality rate has almost tripled at NHS trust despite inspectors' intervention.  Hundreds of patients are feared to have died unexpectedly at three NHS hospital trusts since they were put in 'special measures' regimes intended to make them safer.  The three hospitals, which together serve around 1.5 million people across Lincolnshire, East Yorkshire and Essex, should have improved after hospital inspectors descended in 2013 to put doctors and managers under close scrutiny.  But a fresh study of patient death figures suggests mortality rates have risen.

As NHS reels from all-out doctor's strike, GPs shut for bank holiday weekend and patients who stayed away seek treatment.  Casualty units are braced for a five-day onslaught from the sick in the wake of the doctors' strike.  Most patients heeded warnings to avoid A&E during this week's two-day industrial action.  But those who stayed away are now expected to seek treatment and the surge is likely to last until Monday [5/2/2016].  Hospitals will be under extra pressure because of the closure of GP surgeries over the bank holiday.  Staff must also rearrange 125,000 appointments and operations lost as a result of the all-out strike.

Exclusive: 'It's like a third world country' Patients hit out at struggling A&E.  Patients have blasted a struggling A&E department and said nurses were seen laughing as beds piled up in a corridor.  The under-fire emergency department at North Middlesex University Hospital, Edmonton, north London has been threatened with closure and patients have been quick to criticise the service.  One of London's busiest A&E departments, Express.co.uk saw patients told they faced a minimum three hour wait on a quiet Tuesday morning.

Creeping Sharia in Health Care.  [Scroll down] In Europe the situation is even more dire.  And pervasive.  In the UK, an 87-year-old Alzheimer's patient was forced to wait for care after she fell because the Muslim charge nurse withheld assistance until he finished his prayers.  This delay in care lasted five to ten minutes.  The patient died shortly thereafter.  Meanwhile, in at least one British hospital, staff were turning the beds of Muslim patients up to five times a day so patients could face Mecca while they pray.  Then staff turned them back when the patients were finished.  Staff were also expected to provide Muslim patients with running water so they can wash their feet before prayer.  And then there is the issue of traditional Muslim attire, much of which doesn't meet standards for infection control. [...] Some Muslimas working in hospitals in the UK also want sterile hijabs to wear in the operating room and a private place to scrub in so their modesty can be protected.  Some Muslim health care workers also refuse to use alcohol-based hand sanitizer because they claim it is forbidden according to Islamic law.

Single Payer Government Healthcare Where 40,000 Jr.  Doctors Walk Out of ERs.  The British government and the British Medical Association (BMA) have been negotiating a new junior doctor contract for over 3 years.  The junior doctors working ERs and critical care units went out on strike over it — 40,000 to 45,000 of them.  When you have a big government healthcare system with no competition and an endless taxpayer pocket to draw from, you get doctors going out on strike and abandoning patients — illegally.  The junior doctors have been told they will not be held responsible for any lives lost by their union bosses.  They are government employees with the the usual thug union.

Junior doctors go on strike against forcing another 5,000 operations to be cancelled.  Junior doctors launched a fresh wave of strike action today [4/6/2016] cancelling more than 5,000 operations — bringing the total to almost 25,000 since the dispute began.  Medics walked out across England for a 48 hour strike on non-emergency care at 8am in a continued dispute with the Government over a new contract.  Jeremy Hunt announced in February he would impose the deal amid a continuing row over rates of pay for Saturday shifts.

Former NHS director dies after operation is cancelled four times at her own hospital.  A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation — at her own hospital.  Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.  But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.

Three out of four doctors who have been struck off the medical register in the past two years were trained abroad.  Three out of four doctors struck off the medical register in the last two years were trained abroad, new figures have revealed.  Between October 2013 and October 2015, 130 of 176 of those fired qualified overseas, according to Freedom of Information figures obtained by The Sun.  More than a third of doctors in Britain are foreign, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

NHS faces 'Herculean challenge' amid worsening care and finances.  Waiting lists are now the worst they have been for almost a decade and the NHS faces a "Herculean" task to recover its deteriorating finances without harming patient care, a leading think tank has warned.  The Kings Fund study found two in three senior hospital managers said care for patients has worsened in the last year, while nine out of ten expect to end the year in the red.

Junior doctors should be completely ashamed by today's strike.  The junior doctors' strike that starts today has a strong claim to be the most selfish and irresponsible piece of industrial action in British history.  They are refusing to carry out even emergency care between 8am and 5pm today [4/26/2016] and tomorrow.  This walk out, the first all-out strike since the NHS's creation, isn't over some issue of high principle.  It's about money.  The main sticking point in their negotiations with the government is that Saturday shouldn't be treated as a normal working day.

Secret NHS plot to slash costs could see YOUR prescription drugs AXED.  Some pills currently used for treating conditions including cancer and Alzheimer's could have their state funding reevaluated as part of a root and branch inquiry to help achieve budget cuts.  Top secret 'discussions' reveal that the assessment, which would form part of the Government's overarching spending review, will encompass some "products currently available under pharmaceutical remuneration", including prescriptions.

Hijabs For Hospital Patients: NHS Trust Introduces 'Multi-Faith Dignity Gowns'.  A British National Health Service (NHS) hospital trust has developed official hijabs which they call "multi-faith dignity gowns" to protect the "modesty" of patients, after local Muslims apparently complained about standard hospital gowns.  The hijabs, which can also function as niqab due to its inbuilt facemask, are now being offered at two NHS hospitals, the Royal Bournemouth, and Christchurch Hospitals (RBCH), as Muslim women said the traditional gowns made them "uncomfortable".

The Editor says...
If the hospital makes you uncomfortable, don't go there!  You know what makes me uncomfortable?  People who would fly an airliner into an office building if they had the chance, just to score points with Allah.

Top cancer doctor warns health tourists are bleeding hospitals dry with demand for treatment.  The NHS has been left 'on its knees' by uncontrolled migration from the EU, a leading cancer expert will warn tomorrow [2/9/2016].  Professor Angus Dalgleish, the principal of the Cancer Vaccine Institute, says the NHS is being bled dry of resources by health tourists denied care at home.  Cancer treatment can cost £200,000 and, under Brussels rules, Britain has to offer it to all EU nationals.

Migrant patients costing Britain four times what they pay into NHS fund through Government's new charge.  The cost of treating temporary migrants on the NHS is four times what is collected from the Government's much-vaunted new charge, official figures show.  Eighteen months ago Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt promised the Health Surcharge and other measures would 'make sure the NHS is better resourced'.  But almost a year after it went live, the bombshell figures reveal British taxpayers are still subsidising the health costs of foreign students and others by hundreds of millions of pounds every year.

NHS: UK now has one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world, according to OECD report.  The UK has one of the worst healthcare systems in the developed world according to a damning new report which said the nation has an "outstandingly poor" record of preventing ill health.  Hospitals are now so short-staffed and underequipped that people are also dying needlessly because of a chronic lack of investment.  The verdict, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), will make embarrassing reading for David Cameron who denied the cash-strapped NHS is heading for its worst winter crisis.

The Living Nightmare of Socialized Medicine.  Socialized medicine and one-payer system is great if you don't mind:
  •   Being left blind because you have to wait three years for a twenty-minute surgery
  •   Pulling your own teeth because you are in so much pain and there is no dentist available due to severe shortage of dentists; there is a good explanation why Brits have such bad teeth
  •   Waiting 18 months to get a hearing aid
  •   Being denied a cancer drug because it's too expensive and you are too old
  •   Delivering your baby in a hospital bathroom with your mom helping you
  •   Your baby being born in the hospital parking lot because there is a severe shortage of nurses
  •   There are no beds in the hospital so whatever emergency you have, burns, delivery, stroke, heart attack, broken limbs, you must wait
  •   "12-minute ambulance ride takes nearly three hours — every time"
  •   Having your cancer undetected after 50 hospital visits
  •   Hospital telling you that you must "come back when you are blind"
  •   Being penali
  •   ed for paying for your own treatment or drugs
  •   Being turned away while in labor
  •   Flying 5,000 miles to escape National Health System's wait
  •   Suffer mixed-sex ward misery while terminally ill
  •   Being threatened that your health care will be taken away if you pay for supplemental care yourself
  •   Drowning in hospital bathtub while in labor and left unattended
  •   Spending all night on a hospital gurney and ignored
  •   Being left on a cold hospital floor in your old age
  •   Having transportation refused to and from hospital because you are in a wheelchair

Britain's Health Care: So Bad, Doctors Don't Even Want To Practice There.  As many as 37,000 "junior doctors, or doctors in training who represent just over half of all doctors in the National Health Service," Reuters reports, have said "they would stage a 24-hour stoppage next week, followed by two further 48-hour strikes."  A walkout of disgruntled doctors, the first in Great Britain since 1975, would affect nonemergency care and cause surgeries to be canceled, leaving many Brits, who rely on government health care, to go untreated.  Of course, going without treatment is already part of the British health care experience.

Great moments in UK dentistry, or not.  In 2009, Paul Krugman assured his readers that government-run healthcare was a good idea, writing that:  "In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors.  We've all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false."  I guess one could argue that the determination of "scare stories," like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.  But if I was writhing in agony on a street because of a broken leg, I wouldn't be happy with a healthcare system that told me I didn't need an ambulance.  And if I was part of a system that rewarded hospitals for letting old people die, I might be tempted to say that was a scary system.  Moreover, I would be understandably irked if I was stuck with a system for healthcare that treated patients with callous disregard.

NHS left family on the other side of [a] curtain as their mother died.  A catalogue of serious failings by NHS trusts across the country have been outlined in a damning report by the health service ombudsman.  A litany of complaints made by patients and their families, such as a man with dementia left on a trolley for 33 hours and relatives of a woman forced to listen to her die from the other side of a curtain, highlight poor complaint handling and failures across the NHS.  The report, published by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman, contains the details of 163 investigations into unresolved complaints made over two months last year, including breaches of cancer waiting times, families resorting to putting their family in private care following unsafe discharges from A&E on Christmas Day and the death of an unborn baby following missed opportunities to deliver it early.

Woman has half her face removed after doctor mistakes cancer for hayfever.  A young British woman had to have half of her face removed after severe nosebleeds that were misdiagnosed as hayfever turned out to be cancer, news.com.au reported.

ObamaCare's True Cost.  Privacy is available, but at a huge premium, for out-of-network physicians.  Few can afford this.  The upshot is that the majority, needing someone, lose the ability to pick their doctor.  If you have any of what they call "modifiable factors," like obesity or diabetes, smoking or drug habit, co-morbidities, irresponsible sexual habits (with or without prophylactics), instead of being scheduled to see a physician in 18 weeks, you're waylaid, VA-style, months.  Years.  In the UK, where nationalized medicine is a divine given, people wait unholy amounts of time to be seen.  The latest equipment is rarely available.  The best drugs are nowhere in sight.  So care is "free."  Yet often, the patient with a curable condition or illness, or a fracture, if seen within a quick window of discovering the problem, dies.  Or fails to recover fully or optimally.

The letters NHS stand for a litany of blame, waste and pessimism.  Most people nowadays expect, eventually, to own a house or flat.  Most choose the car they want, the clothes and the food.  They even, increasingly, choose a school for their children.  Health is now the only important area where the great majority is told to take what it is "given" (ha, ha) and be thankful.  Lovers of the NHS say health is "too important to be left to the market"; but food is just as vital as health, and no one argues that a National Food Service should be the sole supplier of nourishment to 90 percent of the population.  If customers had to wait in Tesco for even a tenth as long as they often have to wait in A&E, they would be rioting in the aisles.  And why, anyway, should what is important in human life be decided by others?  What morality lets you choose who cuts your hair but not who removes your cancer?

Euthanasia on the Horizon?  [Scroll down]  For example, in the world of socialized medicine, Great Britain's National Health Services "has started to ration hearing aids for the deaf — with thousands of people being offered only one device when experts say they need two."  In fact, national health care in Britain "is going through a slow and agonizing death" with overcrowded hospitals, incredibly long wait times and surgeries being cancelled.

Top Doctor Calls Free Healthcare Into Question.  Britain's most senior doctor has cast doubts on the sustainability of a healthcare service that is free for all.  His comments come at the same time as UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage called for a debate on the idea of replacing the NHS with an insurance based system.

Numbers of NHS doctors registering to work overseas could reach unprecedented record.  Doctors seeking to work abroad must apply for Certificates of Current Professional Status (CCPS) from their regulator, the General Medical Council (GMC).  In just three days last week, the GMC received 1,644 requests for CCPS documents.  Typically, it receives around 20 to 25 a day.  The extraordinary spike in demand began on 16 September, the day after the Government confirmed it would seek to impose a new contract on junior doctors, after their union, the British Medical Association (BMA), refused to return to negotiations.  Proposed reforms under the new contract would see juniors lose out on pay premiums for working weekday evenings and on Saturdays.

NHS crackdown to claw back migrants' £500m in welfare tourism.  Migrants who travel to Britain from outside Europe for NHS treatment will be charged 150 percent of the cost in a new crackdown on welfare tourism to be unveiled by ministers today [7/14/2014].  Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said new rules on charging foreign visitors would provide hospital bosses with an incentive to chase payments.  The new measures could help claw back up to £500million spent by the NHS on treating foreigners.

Labour accused of 'Rank Hypocrisy' Over Plans to Close Hospitals and Cut Beds.  Labour has been accused of "rank hypocrisy" over the NHS as Shadow Health Secretary Andy Burnham has admitted that the party plans to close hospitals and reduce the number of beds available if it takes power in May.  His party has attacked both the Conservatives and UKIP over the National Health Service lately, accusing both parties of wanting to cut funding to the socialised healthcare provider.

Queue of 18 ambulances waiting to drop off patients at hospital as 'not enough staff and beds to treat them'.  Casualty units across England are in chaos and struggling to cope with an unprecedented surge in patients.  Five hospitals have declared 'major incidents' — usually reserved for air crashes or terror attacks — and cancelled all but the most urgent operations.  At some units patients were told there is standing room only — and one was seen removing a tube themselves as the wait for a nurse was so long.

Praying with a Muslim colleague ruined my career, says Christian NHS worker.  The problem appeared to be that Miss Wasteney is a Christian and her colleague was Muslim.  And her employer — a health authority in one of Britain's most ethnically mixed areas — deemed her behaviour to be a case of harassment and bullying.

Jimmy Savile NHS abuse victims aged five to 75.  Ex-BBC DJ Jimmy Savile sexually assaulted victims aged five to 75 in NHS hospitals over decades of unrestricted access, investigators say.  He assaulted patients in bed, and claimed to have abused corpses, reviews into his conduct on NHS premises found.

Elderly are STILL being denied life-saving operations by NHS despite new laws.  The elderly are still being denied life-saving operations by the NHS despite new laws to prevent age discrimination, leading surgeons warn.  In some areas, no-one over 75 is being offered crucial surgery for breast cancer and very few undergo bowel cancer surgery or have knee and hip replacements.

Thousands attempt suicide while on NHS waiting list for psychological help.  In the latest evidence of a hidden mental health crisis, a coalition of leading charities and medical professionals report that one in 10 patients are waiting for more than a year just to be assessed for treatment, and one in six made an attempt on their life while on a waiting list.  GPs report a "huge rise" in the number of mental health conditions, which has coincided with cuts to mental health services and psychotherapy posts in many parts of the country.

Ed Miliband expected to announce taxes on rich to 'save the NHS'.  Ed Miliband is expected to announce that he will use up to £5billion a year raised from taxes on the rich to help "save the NHS".  The labour leader is likely to say that he will use money raised from a "mansion tax" and bring back the 50p rate to help reduce the "huge pressures" on the NHS.  Mr Miliband is expected to use his keynote speech at the Labour Party conference to announce new policies aimed at reducing hospital waiting times and improving access to GPs.

The families, elderly and disabled being told they must find new GPs.  Thousands of patients are being arbitrarily struck off by GPs who say they can no longer cope with spiralling numbers.  Doctors warned last night that a recruitment crisis has left surgeries with too few staff.  This means they are being forced to 'deregister' patients — many of whom are elderly and have been with the same practice all their lives.

The real reason why NHS is overwhelmed.  Yesterday the Mail revealed the terrible treatment meted out to great-grandmother Lily Dove, who has been told she can no longer visit her local GP.  The surgery said it is unable to cope with a surge in the local population, many of them workers from Eastern Europe, so was 'de-registering' 1,500 patients.  Mrs Dove — who has lived in the area since 1919 — will find it enormously difficult to travel to another doctor three miles away.

Britain's NHS is the world's best health-care system, says report.  The National Health Service has been praised as the world's best health-care system by an international panel of experts who said it was superior to those found in countries which spend far more on health.  The study, entitled "Mirror, Mirror on the Wall," also described US healthcare provision as the worst globally.  Despite investing the most money in health, the US refuses care to many patients without health insurance and is also the worst at saving the lives of people who fall ill, it found.  The Commonwealth Fund, a Washington-based foundation produced the report.

Investigation finds some NHS practices have two year waiting lists.  Patients are being struck off by NHS dentists for failing to attend just one check-up, an investigation has found.  Others are having to travel to surgeries 40 miles away because those nearby are refusing to take on new patients.  Some NHS dental practices have waiting lists of two years which is leading to many patients giving up and paying hundreds for private treatment.

Labour Has Left the NHS in Ruins.  As a doctor who has worked in the NHS for nine years, the sight of Ed Miliband in Newark Hospital telling everyone that Labour would deliver for the NHS was a sight too sore.  Labour was a disaster for the NHS in Nottinghamshire yet there was no walk of shame from the Labour leader, more a conceited swagger and an assertion that the NHS is the left's territory and will stay that way.

The families, elderly and disabled being told they must find new GPs.  Thousands of patients are being arbitrarily struck off by GPs who say they can no longer cope with spiralling numbers.  Doctors warned last night that a recruitment crisis has left surgeries with too few staff.  This means they are being forced to 'deregister' patients — many of whom are elderly and have been with the same practice all their lives.

Statins: Big Government Can Seriously Injure Your Health.  If you believe the "experts", statins are the virtually side-effect-free miracle drug which dramatically lowers cholesterol levels and reduces the incidents of strokes and heart disease.  The question is, though, do you believe a panel of experts who in at least eight cases are known to have ties to the pharmaceutical companies who make this wonder drug?  There are many doctors and academics who don't.

Migrants will pay for the NHS: New bid to cut the £500million-a-year health tourism bill.  The Government yesterday [6/17/2014] unveiled an initial scheme designed to reward health trusts that reclaim payments for caring for EU patients.  Under the plan, a trust can expect a 25 percent bonus for each treatment claimed for.  The shake-up follows concerns that NHS administrative staff are failing to use the system for reclaiming cash for treating foreign patients because they cannot be bothered with the red tape.  It follows a series of initiatives by ministers seeking to stop migrants milking the welfare state.

'Basket Case' Hospital Turned Around By Private Firm In Two Years.  A failing NHS hospital has been voted the best for patient care just two years after it was taken over by a private company.  Hinchingbrooke, was described as a 'basket case' after running up debts of £40 million, and failing to maintain acceptable standards, according to the Daily Mail.  The hospital which is run by the private firm 'Circle' was assessed for mortality rates, re-admission rates and speed in dealing with cancer cases.  In November 2011 the Health Minister, the Earl Howe, described the hospital as a "financial and clinical basket case".

NHS privatisation could be just what the doctor ordered.  Describing how he dealt with the opposition of some medical consultants to its creation Labour's Aneurin Bevan declared:  "I stuffed their mouths with gold."  It is now revered as our national treasure but time and events have moved against it.  We are living much longer than Mr Bevan could possibly have imagined back in 1947 and are making greater demands on the NHS.  Also, because doctors refuse to be used as border guards, it is difficult to stop foreigners coming here and obtaining treatment from a National Health Service to which they have contributed nothing.

Socialized Healthcare: Up Close and Personal.  Since I have relocated to the United Kingdom (via my current employer), I have had an opportunity to witness the effects of Socialized Healthcare.  England's National Health Service (NHS) was born July 5, 1948.  The intent of the NHS was to provide good free health care services to all.  These health services were to be financed entirely from taxation (citizens pay according to their means).  From what I have learned from the English citizens concerning the NHS (I am eligible for the free service simply by being a current resident), the beginning implementation appeared to be accomplishing what it was intended to do (i.e., good free healthcare for all).  However, the British Government did not foresee a healthcare service where the non-tax payers (people on government benefits i.e., welfare) outnumber the taxpayers.  More non-tax payers utilizing the free health service appeared as an unintended consequence.

New NHS statins guidance 'risks harming patients'.  Millions of people over the age of 50 risk harming their health if they follow new NHS guidance telling them to take statins, leading doctors have warned the Health Secretary.  Proposals to advise 12 million people to take the drugs could have "worrying" consequences because the plans were borne out of an "overdependence" on studies funded by the pharmaceutical industry, they say.

Thousands die of thirst and poor care in NHS.  At least 1,000 hospital patients are dying needlessly each month from dehydration and poor care by doctors and nurses, according to an NHS study.  The deaths from acute kidney injury could be prevented by simple steps such as nurses ensuring patients have enough to drink and doctors reviewing their medication, the researchers say.  Between 15,000 and 40,000 patients die annually because hospital staff fail to diagnose the treatable kidney problem, a figure that dwarfs the death toll from superbugs like MRSA.

Millions to suffer as NHS is 'about to run out of cash'.  The charity claims millions of sick and vulnerable will face soaring waiting times, cuts in staff and deteriorating" quality of care.  Only a "significant" boost in funding can prevent the crash.  Lead report author John Appleby, chief economist at the fund, said:  "There is still scope to improve efficiency in the health service and efforts to release savings should be re-doubled.  "However, it is now a question of when, not if, the NHS runs out of money.

Fears of NHS Cover-Up as Hospitals Accused of 'Fiddling' Death Figures.  NHS hospitals have been "fiddling" their death rate figures by falsely claiming that patients were terminally ill, according to new research.  The new figures, which show that the number of "terminal" illnesses have risen five times since 2006, have caused concerns that hospitals could be covering up for poor care.

NHS patients 'could be forced to pay bed and board'.  NHS patients could be forced to pay for their bed and board in hospital unless there is a cash injection into health services after the next election, senior managers have warned.  The NHS Confederation, which represents managers, said that without major reforms and an increase in investment, hospitals would become "swamped" with patients — while swathes of the population could be left without a GP.

NHS is 'writing off' patients who are over 75.  Pensioners with cancer are being written off as too old to treat, campaigners said yesterday [1/22/2014].  They cited figures showing survival rates for British patients aged 75 and over are among the worst in Europe.  Young lung cancer sufferers are only 10 percent more likely to die within five years than their continental counterparts.  But pensioners with the disease have 44 percent less chance of survival.

Half of foreign doctors are below British standards.  Half of all foreign doctors in Britain do not have the necessary skills to work here but can practise because the competency exam is too easy, a major study finds.  The majority of the 88,000 foreign doctors in the health service would fail exams if they were held to the same standard as their British colleagues, according to the research.  The disclosure will add to concerns over the reliance of the NHS on foreign doctors.  The language ability of some has been questioned in recent years.  The research potentially shows more wide-ranging inadequacies.

NHS ban medicine if you are 'too old' in new attack on Britain's elderly.  Older patients would effectively be written off on the grounds that they no longer make a big enough financial contribution to society.  The Department of Health is demanding the changes in an attempt to cut the crippling NHS medicines bill.  But Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients' Association, called the plans "disturbing and discriminatory", adding:  "Human life cannot be assessed in terms of cost and benefit."

Soylent Green Really Is People.  Imagine it's 2014. Nazi concentration camps whose smokestacks emitted the by-product of incinerated human remains were eradicated more than sixty years before.  The only place one could see such horrors was in old newsreels or science fiction films.  Not so fast.  It turns out some smokestacks in the U.K. have been billowing out the burned remains of more than 15,000 fetuses over the last two years.  This would have necessarily included not only aborted fetuses, but babies that were stillborn or the result of miscarriages as well.

More than 11,000 heart attack patients would not have died if British care was as good as in Sweden, study claims.  More than 11,000 deaths of heart attack patients could have been avoided if British care was as good as Sweden's, a study has claimed.  A third more Britons than Swedes died within a month of having a heart attack, according to the research on half a million patients.  Scientists from University College London examined death rates in the two countries between 2004 and 2010.

We've got to dump the 'wonder of the world' myths about the NHS.  Dealing with the NHS over a long period can turn you into a tougher person.  It reinforces the universal truth that "if you didn't laugh, you'd cry".  Even if the joke is on you.

Numbers of elderly patients subject to 'chemical cosh' medication soars.  Soaring numbers of elderly care home residents and hospital patients are being physically tied up or subjected to "chemical cosh" medication, shocking research revealed yesterday [1/16/2014].

Scale of NHS financial crisis revealed amid looming staff cuts.  NHS hospitals face having to cut staff and services amid the worst financial outlook for almost a decade — with almost half forecasting they will end the current financial year in debt, records show.  Board reports covering all 145 hospital trusts in England disclose that 44 per cent expect to end the year in deficit — with a combined "black hole" of more than £330 million between them.

Growing anger at NHS plan to harvest private data.  Growing numbers of GPs are joining a rebellion against an NHS scheme to harvest millions of medical records.  Unless patients object, officials will start to extract confidential data from their files next month.  The information will be used to improve care and assist research work, health chiefs say.  But some family doctors fear the data will be misused by insurers and businesses.

Patients attend A&E more than fifty times in a year and one even visited 234 times.  Some patients attend A&E departments dozens of times a year, increasing pressure on staff and pushing waiting times beyond the four-hour target, new figures reveal.  Nearly 12,000 people visited the same casualty department more than 10 times between 2012 and 2013, while 150 people made more than 50 visits in that year, information obtained under a Freedom of Information (FOI) request showed.

Grandmother 'left to die' after being refused funding for chemotherapy treatment.  A grandmother has been 'left to die' by the NHS after being refused life-saving chemotherapy — because her cancer is not 'exceptional' enough.  After waiting eight months for the treatment using 'anti-cancer' drug Ofatumumab, Mary Stanton, 69, was told she was not eligible for it and there was nothing more doctors could do for her.

Telling harsh truths about the NHS is a bitter but necessary pill.  Yesterday [12/11/2013], we were shown a little more about Britain's GP network.  The Care Quality Commission looked into 920 practices and found almost a third failing to meet basic standards.  Some of the practices would disgrace even third-world countries:  vaccines stored at unsafe temperatures; patients being seen in rooms without doors.  One clinic was infested with maggots.  A quarter of surgeries failed to pass the test for managing medicines.  A fifth failed on cleanliness and infection control.  Behind these figures lay some shocking examples.

Palin appearing more and more the Prophet as older UK cancer patients are increasingly shunned.  Former Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin caused quite the stir in 2009 when, in challenging the drafting of the Affordable Care Act, she stated that the bill would create a "death panel" of bureaucrats who would decide whether Americans — such as her elderly parents or children with certain disabilities were "worthy of medical care."  But critics like Palin had already viewed Britain's National Health Service (NHS) and its cost-effectiveness analysis to determine whether new treatments and drugs should be available to those covered by under the NHS.

Migrants will now be forced to pay for A&E treatment in Government crackdown.  Migrants and overseas visitors will have to pay for accident and emergency treatment from the NHS, the Government announced today [12/30/2013]. [...] Under the changes, migrants and overseas visitors will have to pay for primary care services such as minor surgery carried out by GPs, while prescription charges will be extended.

A&E winter crisis deepens.  Under-strain A&E units have missed the target to see patients within four hours for the first time this winter.  In further sign of a growing crisis in emergency departments, the NHS in England failed to ensure that 95 percent cases were dealt with within the time limit.

National Health Shambles.  One investigation revealed that a quarter of new mothers were abandoned by their midwives during labour, with some left to give birth on the floor or in corridors.  The second found that mistakes deemed so serious they should never happen are being made in hospitals five times a week.  And the third survey said thousands of patients have all but given up trying to secure appointments with their family doctor.

GPs under pressure not to refer patients to specialists, doctors warn.  Cost-cutting pressure on GPs not to refer patients to hospital lies behind delays in ensuring people with cancer symptoms are seen by specialists, doctors have warned.  One GP called for the scrapping of schemes which sometimes pay thousands of pounds in incentives to family doctors who cut the number of patients sent to hospital.

Lottery of NHS drugs punishes the dying.  Thousands of patients suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses are being denied the drugs they need from the NHS, according to a report.  Even though the treatments have been approved by the health service rationing body, at least 14,000 patients a year are not receiving them.

Our ageist NHS is failing the people who need it most.  If you're going to be ill, my advice is simple:  do it in Hackney.  At the very least, make sure you're not living in Leicestershire.  For every pound per person spent on health care in Hackney, Leicestershire gets just 59 pence.  If you're going to get cancer in the West Midlands, do it in central Birmingham, where the spend per head is £10,052, not in Herefordshire, where it is £5,092.  Oh, and I should mention that Herefordshire has nearly three times as many patients per 100,000 people on the cancer register as Birmingham.  Yes, you read that right:  half the funding, but three times the relative number of patients.

Fewer beds mean NHS is operating close to the bone.  There is a philosophy taught in business schools called Just in Time which preaches that factories should be run as leanly and efficiently as possible.  Rather than paying to keep people and machinery on standby you reduce the capacity of a production line to the level at which it can just about cope with demand.  It is a more profitable way to run a factory but I am not sure I would be so keen on the theory if I had been lying in the back of an ambulance for six hours and 22 minutes waiting for a hospital bed to become free.

NHS spends millions a year on unproven 'crank' therapies.  The NHS is spending millions of pounds a year on unproven 'crank' therapies while denying drugs to cancer and dementia sufferers. [...] Women can get free electrical stimulation therapy if they suffer from urinary incontinence and mothers-to-be with morning sickness can be prescribed ginger on the NHS.  Other alternative treatments available include magnetic field therapy and tai chi for multiple sclerosis, and aromatherapy for dementia.

'Alarming' figures as patients forced to wait hours in ambulances.  Some patients are being forced to wait in ambulances outside hospitals for hours because accident and emergency departments are too busy to take them, according to research.  In one case, a patient in Wales was made to wait more than six hours before being admitted, while another in England was delayed for more than five hours, the BBC found.

Inspectors raise alarm about long A&E waits, high death rates and staff shortages.  One in four NHS hospital trusts is failing to offer safe, good-quality care to all its patients, a damning report has shown.  Out of 161 trusts in England, 44 have now been labelled as 'high risk', with serious concerns raised about their performance.  Shockingly, a number of the hospitals now marked out as risky were classified 'safe' as recently as earlier this year.

NHS pulls the plug on its £11 billion IT system.  A plan to create the world's largest single civilian computer system linking all parts of the National Health Service is to be abandoned by the Government after running up billions of pounds in bills.  Ministers are expected to announce next month that they are scrapping a central part of the much-delayed and hugely controversial 10-year National Programme for IT.

Pensioner left on end of life pathway for four days.  The family of a pensioner who spent four days begging for food and water after he was placed on a controversial end-of-life programme have accused a hospital of treating him "like a dog".  The family of Ron Jee claim the 80-year-old was put on a programme similar to the Liverpool Care Pathway.  This involves the withdrawal of food, fluids and medication for terminally ill patients who often die within hours of being put on it.

Thousands of eye patients are waiting so long for NHS treatment they are going blind.  Thousands of patients are needlessly going blind because they are waiting so long for appointments at NHS eye clinics, a report warns.  As many as four in ten eye specialists and nurses admit that their patients are losing sight unnecessarily as they cannot get vital checks or treatment.  The report by the RNIB says NHS eye clinics are struggling to cope with the rising numbers of elderly patients losing their sight on top of cuts to their budgets.

NHS waiting lists are longest in five years.  Almost 2.9 million people are on a waiting list for treatment at NHS hospitals — the highest level in five years, according to official figures.  The number of patients waiting to be admitted for operations or other treatment in June was a quarter of a million higher than in the same month last year, official figures show.

NHS to employ 1 in 8, account for half of UK budget.  The King's Fund has showed that the UK is spending more than twice as much of its national income (nine per cent) on health and social care than it did 50 years ago.  PMLive reports that taking into account economic growth and current levels of taxation and expenditure, this would mean 50 per cent of total public spending would be used within health and social care by 2060.

Police chief's wife rescues him from 'negligent' hospital.  A police chief's family 'smuggled' him out of a hospital where he was being treated after claiming that the NHS was making him worse.  The wife of Metropolitan Police superintendent Clive Wakeley pushed his wheelchair and told their children to 'run'.  Since fleeing hospital last week, Joanne Wakeley says her husband's condition has improved.

NHS patients 45% more likely to die than in US.  Patients are 45% more likely to die in NHS hospitals than in US ones, according to figures revealing how badly England's health service compares with those of other countries.  Previously unpublished data collated by Professor Sir Brian Jarman over more than 10 years found NHS mortality rates were among the worst of those in seven developed countries.

Police investigate claims NHS staff were bullied into falsifying cancer waiting times.  The Care Quality Commission (CQC) found "inaccuracies" with waiting time data relating to cancer treatment at Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust.  The chief inspector of hospitals said that patients' lives may have been put at risk so the trust could give an impression it was meeting waiting list targets.  Essex Police said that it was examining whether a "criminal investigation" was needed.

British Health Care Predictably Running Out Of Money.  How bad are things in Great Britain's national health care system?  Bad enough that officials are now recruiting cheaper foreign doctors to save money.

NHS Socialized Medicine In Britain: Unmitigated Failure.  A new report on Britain's National Health Service notes that as many as 13,000 needless deaths have occurred in 14 NHS hospital trusts since 2005.  This is no fluke.  It's the result of socialized medicine, done by experts.

Did Kate Middleton Use the NHS? Of Course Not.  Naturally, Kate Middleton opted out of Britain's "world class" National Health Service for the delivery of her baby.  According to the Daily Express, a suite at the private Lindo Wing of London's St. Mary's hospital costs £6,265 per night — and this "excludes consultants' fees."  Middleton's total bill is expected to come to around £12,000 ($18,500).  A poll conducted by ICM revealed that "37 per cent of the British public think that she should be having her firstborn on the National Health Service, believing it would send a powerful symbol if the new third in line to the throne was a child of the NHS."

NHS 'bans' GPs from carrying out minor operations on patients who smoke unless they promise to quit.  Patients are being denied minor treatments because they smoke, The Mail on Sunday has found.  In one case a healthy middle-aged man was told he could not have a ten-minute operation to cut a small benign growth off the side of his head, because of his habit.

The NHS 111 service has been a disaster from the start.  Once again, we are left rubbing our eyes in disbelief at the utter shambles that passes for the administration of a public service.  The NHS 111 service, which answers non-emergency calls from the public, is close to collapse after its main provider pulled out.  NHS Direct, which originally won 11 of the 46 contracts to provide the service around the country, has abandoned them, saying the deals were 'financially unsustainable'.

Obama's Perversity.  Anybody with a computer can now read the weekly exposés of the much-admired British government's health system, with dirty, overcrowded hospital rooms; spreading antibiotic resistance; poor treatment for older people (who don't have enough QALYs left on their life tickets); and deliberately uncontrolled immigration to bring in cheap Labour voters.  These are all in our future.

Patients face postcode lottery for cataract treatment, charity claims.  Cataract sufferers are four times more likely to be offered operations in some parts of the country than others, according to research by the Royal National Institute of Blind People.  The study also revealed sharp discrepancies in how long patients can be expected to wait for surgery.

Labour's day of shame over the NHS.  Labour faced its 'darkest moment' yesterday [7/15/2013] over its stewardship of the Health Service as a devastating report laid bare an appalling catalogue of failings at 11 hospitals where 'thousands' of patients needlessly died.  Voters are told that Labour is the only party in whose hands the NHS is safe, but David Cameron and Jeremy Hunt said the study proved the opposite to be true.  Labour had presided, they said, over a culture of 'cover-up' where targets were more important than people and ministers' reputations more important than care.

Patients facing eight-hour waits in ambulances outside A&E departments.  Sick patients have been forced to wait up to eight hours in ambulances queuing outside Accident and Emergency units amid a crisis in the system. [...] Official figures from eight of England's ten ambulance trusts show that in 3,424 patients waited more than two hours before "handover" to hospital staff during 2012/13 — compared with 2,061 such patients the year before.

Coming Soon to the U.S.: Two-Day Waits for Doctors?  Remember back when Obamacare was still being touted as the next big thing that would both save money and create universal access to health care?  You know, that false dawn before even the law's administrators were hoping it doesn't immediately degenerate into "a third-world experience"?  Stories abounded about how Canada and England showed just how it could be done.  Here's the latest on basic care from Great Britain's fabled National Health Service [...]

If the NHS is the envy of the world the world is bonkers.  I'm trying to think of professions where killing people wins you promotion, a higher salary and a bigger pension.  Apart from the military, the only one I can think of is the National Health Service.

NHS emergency wards overflowing means desperately ill treated in cupboards and corridors.  Emergency patients are being given lifesaving care in corridors and store rooms every day because hospitals cannot cope.  Scores are feared to have lost their lives or suffered serious harm.  One patient left in a hallway for two hours without appropriate treatment died after having a heart attack.  While staff attending him were cleared of any blame, half of all casualty nurses report seeing patients being cared for in areas not designated for treatment on a daily basis.

The NHS is fatally unsafe — and our politicians are doing nothing to change that.  Our once unimpeachable NHS, which no one dared give anything but gushing praise to, now seems constantly in the news for appalling failings in the most basic standards of human decency.  So how do our politicians respond?  The latest reports that hospitals become fatally unsafe at weekends, when top doctors go AWOL, follows admissions that many A&E units are treacherously overloaded.

13,000 died needlessly at 14 worst NHS trusts.  The NHS's medical director will spell out the failings of 14 trusts in England, which between them have been responsible for up to 13,000 "excess deaths" since 2005.  Prof Sir Bruce Keogh will describe how each hospital let its patients down badly through poor care, medical errors and failures of management, and will show that the scandal of Stafford Hospital, where up to 1,200 patients died needlessly, was not a one-off.

No politician dares to admit the terrible truth about the NHS.  Really, the saga of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has progressed from tragedy through scandal to farce, and has now plumbed astonishing new depths of moral and political squalor.  For at the weekend, after the revelations of the cover-up over deaths from negligence at Morecambe Bay hospitals, we learned just what happened to Kay Sheldon, a non-executive director at the CQC, when she tried to bring to light failings at the regulator which were putting patients' lives at risk.  And now we also know — just as had been suspected from the start — that the culture of bullying, intimidation and lies in the NHS reached to the very top.

Obamacare Preview: 100 patients a day wait an hour or more in ambulances outside hospitals.  Up to 100 patients a day are being forced to wait more than an hour in ambulances outside overstretched A&E units.  More than 37,000 people needing urgent treatment were held in so-called ambulance 'jams' last year — with delays of up to four hours recorded at some hospitals.

The Welfare State is protecting callous and incompetent staff.  Scandal follows scandal — and yet hardly anyone ever seems to be held to account.

Stafford scandal: Jeremy Hunt calls for police inquiry into NHS.  Police should investigate the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of patients at the Mid Staffordshire NHS hospitals in the wake of the public inquiry, the Health Secretary says.

Britain's Health Care System: Its Problems Continue.  More than 101,000 NHS workers responded to a survey that asked them if they agreed with the following statement:  "If a friend or relative needed treatment, I would be happy with the standard of care provided by this organization."  While 63% said they agreed or strongly agreed, 12% said they disagreed or strongly disagreed while a quarter, reports the Daily Mail, "did not 'express a preference.'"

The Coming Obamacare Disaster.  London's Daily Mail has chronicled the growing problems with the NHS, which include declining quality of care and availability of services coupled with increased costs.  This is what is in store for us, if Congress does not repeal Obamacare.

The NHS, the drug firms and the price racket.  Drug companies face accusations of secretly colluding with pharmacists to overcharge the NHS millions of pounds, following an undercover investigation by The Telegraph.

The world has changed — and so must the NHS.  Patients with certain conditions face a 40 percent greater chance of dying if they are unfortunate enough to be admitted to hospital at the weekend.

Ageism in hospitals 'leaves elderly heart attack and breast cancer victims to die'.  The elderly are being denied life-saving treatment for heart attacks and surgery following breast cancer, a report warns.  It reveals the extent of age discrimination across the NHS, with doctors making 'inaccurate assumptions' about patients based on their dates of birth.  This year the Government promised to end ageism in the Health Service and introduced laws that enable the elderly to sue if they are unfairly refused treatment.

Bad care is inevitable in the NHS.  Imagine if everything at Tesco's was free but rationed, and subject to delivery delays of several months.  Then throw in the fact that there are no other free alternatives.  You would have a nightmare on your hands — huge queues, attracted by the free goods, then further stretched by the long delays.  Imagine how the staff would then behave — harrassed by the limitless demand of customers, but also in a tyrannical position of monopoly power, because there is no alternative provider.

Stafford Hospital scandal: the scandal that shamed the NHS.  Hundreds of hospital patients died needlessly.  In the wards, people lay starving, thirsty and in soiled bedclothes, buzzers droning hopelessly as their cries for help went ignored.  Some received the wrong medication; some, none at all.  Over 139 days, the public inquiry into the Stafford hospital scandal has heard testimony from scores of witnesses about how an institution which was supposed to care for the most vulnerable instead became a place of danger.

Patient care must be the primary target.  The neglect, cruelty and incompetence that characterised the way that so many patients at Stafford hospital were treated by its staff has been catalogued by Robert Francis's inquiry, as we report today.  Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, is correct when he states that what happened in that hospital was "simply not worthy of a civilised country".

Half of those on Liverpool Care Pathway never told.  Almost half of dying patients placed on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway are never told that life-saving treatment has been withdrawn, a national audit has found.  The study suggests that in total, around 57,000 patients a year are dying in NHS hospitals without being told that efforts to keep them alive have been stopped.

Rewarding Hospitals to Let Old People Die?  I'm talking about the government-run healthcare system in the United Kingdom, which apparently is bribing hospitals to make greater use of the "Liverpool Care Pathway," which is the UK version of a death panel.

Nearly 3,000 patients die every year because of blunders on NHS wards.  Nearly 3,000 patients are dying a year because of needless hospital blunders, figures reveal.  Another 7,500 are severely harmed after being wrongly diagnosed, given incorrect drugs or poorly cared for.  Experts warn that such mistakes will increase because already overstretched staff will be unable to cope with the higher numbers of patients coming into hospitals.

Another British Healthcare Horror Story:  [Scroll down]  Keep in mind, by the way, that the Liverpool Care Pathway is sort of akin to the IPAB "death panel" in Obamacare.  Defenders of government-run healthcare say that's nonsense and assert that there won't be any rationing, denial of care, or requirements for euthanasia.  That's technically true, but the Obamacare death panel will be determining what's an acceptable treatment and what's the government-approved payment schedule.

The Sadistic Brutality of England's Government-Run Healthcare.  My final reaction is to wonder what Paul Krugman would say about this scandalous neglect and mistreatment.  During the Obamacare debate, he told us we could ignore stories about what was happening across the ocean, writing that "In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors.  We've all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false."

Seriously ill baby forced to wait for 12 hours in A&E.  A seriously ill baby was forced to wait in an Accident and Emergency ward for more than 12 hours because there were no suitable beds available anywhere in the UK.  The shocking case emerged as specialists yesterday warned the Department of Health about a national shortage of intensive care beds for children this winter.

Hospitals bribed to put patients on pathway to death.  Hospitals are paid millions to hit targets for the number of patients who die on the Liverpool Care Pathway, the Mail can reveal.  The incentives have been paid to hospitals that ensure a set percentage of patients who die on their wards have been put on the controversial regime.

NHS patients experience 'contempt and cruelty', says Jeremy Hunt.  In the worse cases staff have overseen "a kind of normalisation of cruelty", Jeremy Hunt told an audience of health professionals at The King's Fund, a London-based think-tank.  Managers were so "buried in spreadsheets" that they had become "blind" to the fact that patients were not being treated with dignity or respect, he said.  Poor care had become "perhaps the biggest problem of all facing the NHS", Mr Hunt claimed in his strongest speech yet on the NHS, almost three months into his tenure as Health Secretary.

Now sick babies go on death pathway.  Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial 'death pathways'.  Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults.  But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food and fluid by tube is being used on young patients as well as severely disabled newborn babies.

This Is Your Life under Obamacare.  [Scroll down]  Patients can starve to death in the NHS or leave medical care with malnutrition:
Malnutrition killed more than 240 patients on NHS wards in 2007, the highest toll in a decade, figures show.
The appalling statistics reveal that the number of men and women starving to death in hospitals has risen by 16 percent since Labour came to power.
Since 1997, 2,311 hospital patients have died from malnutrition and the effects of hunger.
There were 209 cases in 1997, when Tony Blair was elected under a pledge to save the NHS.
Ten years later the toll was 242.

From Healthcare to Holocaust.  [Scroll down]  Of course, such sacrifices are often couched in the language of compassion.  Hitler called his euthanasia program "mercy killing."  In 2012 Great Britain, it's called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).  Originally created to help cancer sufferers during their last days, the LCP, which withholds lifesaving care from heavily sedated patients, has been expanded well beyond its inventors' intentions.  According to British neurologist Dr. Patrick Pullicino, today 130,000 National Health Service (NHS) patients, many of whom are far from death, are shown to an early grave each year via the LCP; 29 percent of all deaths under NHS care can be attributed to euthanasia.  Likewise, the Netherlands, with its ObamaCare-style short-term care and Bismarck-style long-term care systems, has some of the most liberal abortion and euthanasia laws on the planet, including one allowing physicians to euthanize "suffering" infants with their parents' consent.

3,000 doctors putting patients on 'death lists' that single them out to be allowed to die.  Thousands of patients have already been placed on 'death registers' which single them out to be allowed to die in comfort rather than be given life-saving treatment in hospital, it emerged last night.  Nearly 3,000 doctors have promised to draw up a list of patients they believe are likely to die within a year, Department of Health figures showed yesterday [10/16/2012].

Want to Die? Try Government-Run Healthcare in the United Kingdom.  I'm not a fan of the American healthcare system.  It suffers from huge inefficiencies because of problems such as third-party payer, which is caused by government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid along with a system of tax code-driven over-insurance in the supposedly private sector.  But regardless of how much I grouse about the damage government causes in the United States, I can say with considerable confidence that the government-run system in the United Kingdom has even larger problems.

UK hospital has 40 percent death rate after abdominal ops.  More than four in 10 patients undergoing abdominal surgery at one hospital in the UK die within 30 days, according to figures described as "shocking" yesterday [9/20/2012].  The death rate for the emergency surgery is 12 times higher than at the best performing hospital, where just one in 28 patients dies.  But patients have no means of knowing which is the safer hospital, as the research does not name the trusts involved.

From Healthcare to Holocaust.  [Scroll down]  Of course, such sacrifices are often couched in the language of compassion.  Hitler called his euthanasia program "mercy killing."  In 2012 Great Britain, it's called the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).  Originally created to help cancer sufferers during their last days, the LCP, which withholds lifesaving care from heavily sedated patients, has been expanded well beyond its inventors' intentions.  According to British neurologist Dr. Patrick Pullicino, today 130,000 National Health Service (NHS) patients, many of whom are far from death, are shown to an early grave each year via the LCP; 29 percent of all deaths under NHS care can be attributed to euthanasia.  Likewise, the Netherlands, with its ObamaCare-style short-term care and Bismarck-style long-term care systems, has some of the most liberal abortion and euthanasia laws on the planet, including one allowing physicians to euthanize "suffering" infants with their parents' consent.

In Britain's Liverpool Pathway We Get A Preview Of Obmacare [sic] And Hell.  It is well known that about 30% of medical expenditures occur in the last year of life.  I view this a tautological dodge because you usually don't need a lot of medical care until you are near death and as no one knows which is the last year of their life it is a pretty useless metric... unless you can designate with certainty the last year of a patient's life and then set out to minimize costs during that period.

Heart virus kills young mother, 28, after doctors kept saying it was indigestion.  A young mother died from a heart condition after doctors repeatedly told her she only had heartburn when she complained of severe chest pains.  Gemma Jones, 28, had suffered crushing agony in her arms, abdomen and chest for months before she collapsed and died at her home.

NHS staff drive fleet of taxpayer-funded luxury cars.  National Procurement, a branch of the NHS National Services Division, arranged for staff who are deemed to be "regular users" of cars for business to get the cars through a taxpayer-backed vehicle-leasing scheme.  The role of National Procurement, which is funded by the Scottish Government, is to buy medical supplies for the NHS, and to "increase savings" for the health service.

Patients starve and die of thirst on hospital wards.  Forty-three hospital patients starved to death last year and 111 died of thirst while being treated on wards, new figures disclose today [10/6/2012].

NHS and US health system 'should share ideas'.  The US health system and the NHS have much to learn from each other, experts say.

Socialized Medicine Is Enough To Chase Away British Doctors.  Britain is suffering from an exodus of doctors.  If America doesn't want physician flight in its future, voters will have to turn President Obama out of office this fall so that repeal of ObamaCare can be possible.

Patients' lives at risk in NHS hospital wards 'on brink of collapse'.  Some hospitals narrowly avoid "catastrophe" every weekend, research by the Royal College of Physicians has found, because doctors' shifts are limited by the European Working Time Directive and they do not want to work anti-social hours.  Some are "struggling to cope" with the volume of older patients.  Many are discharged in the middle of the night or shunted around "like parcels" to free beds for new arrivals.

Rat in theatre leads to 40 operations cancelled at King's Mill.  Operations at a Nottinghamshire hospital were cancelled after a rat was found in an operating theatre.  A spokeswoman from King's Mill Hospital, in Mansfield, said the rodent had entered the theatre last Monday night [11/5/2012] when the room was not in use.  Pest controllers were called into the hospital and as a result, about 40 operations had to be cancelled.

Death Panels After All?.  There's an explosive story out today in the Daily Mail over in the UK claiming that Britain's National Health Service euthanizes 130,000 elderly patients a year.  This claim doesn't issue from some loopy former governor of an arctic province; it comes from professor Patrick Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent.

Hospitals 'letting patients die to save money'.  Hospitals may be depriving elderly patients of food and drink to hasten their deaths as part of cost-cutting measures to free up bed space, leading doctors warn.

Elderly patients are being 'deprived of food and drink so they die quicker and free up bed space', claim doctors.  Hospitals may be withholding food and drink from elderly patients so they die quicker to cut costs and save on bad spaces, leading doctors have warned.  Thousands of terminally ill people are placed on a 'care pathway' every year to hasten the ends of their lives.  But in a letter to the Daily Telegraph, six doctors who specialise in elderly care said hospitals across the UK could be using the controversial practice to ease the pressure on resources.

Killing the Elderly Is Old News for Britain's NHS.  Last week's story here that Britain's National Health Service euthanizes 130,000 elderly folks a year is no surprise.  Last year, a major report cited the socialist health-care agency for neglecting the elderly under its care.  The neglect was so severe that doctors began prescribing drinking water to patients because they would otherwise die of thirst.  In other words, nothing changes in Britain, no matter how bad the abuses are.  That is the lesson to be be learned about nationalized health care.  Euthanasia, as well, killed the patients more quickly than simple neglect.

The NHS did not deserve to be so disgracefully glorified.  Kane [Gorny] was a promising footballer with a bright future ahead of him until he was admitted to hospital.  He died of thirst a couple of days later. [...] Kane even went to the extreme length of calling 999 from his hospital bed so desperate was he for a drink during his visit to hospital for a hip replacement in 2009.  Yet when the police arrived, the nurses ushered them away, assuring them that the young patient was confused.  Within a day he was dead.  Dead because NHS hospital staff refused to give a sick man a glass of water.

The Editor says...
But then the nurses were arrested the next day for manslaughter, right?  Somehow that part was left out of the story.

Why the UK Is Ditching Socialized Medicine.  While Greece and its financial problems receive some media coverage in the United States, there is a much bigger story flying under the mainstream media radar:  in Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has introduced a bill seeking to partially privatize the National Health Service (NHS).  Why?  Because the British government is "hoping to avoid a Greek-style financial meltdown."

Obamacare's stench grows even worse.  Great Britain began practicing socialized medicine through the taxpayer-funded National Health Services in 1948.  And indeed, one of the first U.K. studies on the emigration of their native-born physicians, "British Doctors at Home and Abroad," published in 1964, noted that, beginning in the 1950s, their docs were leaving for "high-income" countries at an alarming rate:  "Many of them stressed the wider field of work they could undertake in general practice abroad and criticized the limited role of the general practitioner in England."  And nearly half a century later, Britain's "brain drain" continues.

Pensions strike will hit thousands of NHS operations, says Andrew Lansley.  Thousands of operations will have to be cancelled because of next Wednesday's strike, the Health Secretary has warned.  Calling on NHS staff to "carefully consider" their decision to take action, Andrew Lansley urged them to "put patients first".  The Department of Health estimates one in five NHS staff could strike on November 30, which officials think might lead to a 20 percent drop in capacity.

Why NHS is on the critical list:  The NHS is the last Soviet-style nationalised industry.  It gobbles up a sixth of all Government spending and is exempt from "the cuts" because it is such a political hot potato.  Before global warming it was the nearest thing we had to a substitute religion.  It can still do no wrong, despite the fact that MRSA in filthy hospitals has killed more patients than Dr Harold Shipman.  It is also grotesquely uncommercial, despite being by far the largest business in Britain.

Top doctor's chilling claim: The NHS kills off 130,000 elderly patients every year.  NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday [6/18/2012].  Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial 'death pathway' into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.

Pain And Suffering.  Recall the complaints that the U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that doesn't provide universal medicine?  So how's that arrangement working elsewhere?  Rather poorly, particularly in Britain.

New Efficiencies in Health Care? Not Likely.  If the British experience is any indication, generic drugs and expert commissions will do little to lower costs.

Doctors apologise after they missed 39 chances to diagnose tumour that killed pensioner.  Health chiefs have apologised to the family of a woman whose lung cancer was missed — even though she was seen by doctors 39 times in three years.  Jean Cross, 60, died alone in a hospital toilet after being misdiagnosed with a 'frozen shoulder' when she actually had a tumour so large it was pressing into her arm.

Visiting a patient in a British hospital? Then take them food and water, just to be safe.  While GPs are preparing to go on strike, and consultants and nurses ratchet up their attacks on the Coalition's proposed reforms to the NHS, four Britons are dying of dehydration and malnutrition in hospital each day.  Few deaths can be as agonising as those caused by lack of liquids and nutrients, yet few deaths are as preventable.

£12bn NHS computer system is scrapped.  The Coalition will today [9/22/2011] announce it is putting a halt to years of scandalous waste of taxpayers' money on a system that never worked.  It will cut its losses and 'urgently' dismantle the National Programme for IT — a monument to Whitehall folly during Labour's 13 years in power.

Elderly patients condemned to early death by secret use of do not resuscitate orders.  The orders — which record an advance decision that a patient's life should not be saved if their heart stops — are routinely being applied without the knowledge of the patient or their relatives.  On one ward, one-third of DNR orders were issued without consultation with the patient or their family, according to the NHS's own records.  At another hospital, junior doctors freely admitted that the forms were filled out by medical teams without the involvement of patients or relatives.

Whistling past the death panel.  [Dr. Donald] Berwick believes that the British system is "not just a national treasure; it is a global treasure."  By selecting Berwick, Obama has confirmed that he basically agrees.  Those of us who, by contrast, think the British system represents a future that does not work should do everything within our power keep America free from what Anderson aptly calls "Obama's and Berwick's disruptive designs."

Malevolent Neglect.  Much has been written about the substandard care and appalling conditions that led to the premature deaths of as many as 1,200 people at Stafford Hospital in England.  As the story unfolds, it appears that the government's insistence that this was an isolated circumstance, not indicative of the National Health Service (NHS) as a whole, is a pitiful excuse bordering on criminality.

NHS reaching 'breaking point', doctors warn.  The NHS could soon reach 'breaking point' due to increasing demands on the service, cuts in doctors' hours and financial cutbacks, senior doctors warned.

Why wouldn't the NHS save our child?  Ruby's parents raised £170,000 for lifesaving cancer treatment in America — then learnt the NHS could have treated her all along. Shockingly, it's a story being repeated across Britain.

Parents' fury as teenage daughter dies just days after doctors sent her home.  A schoolgirl suffered multiple organ failure and four heart attacks just days after doctors sent her home with paracetamol and told her to take 'plenty of rest', an inquest heard.  Amy Carter, 15, begged doctors not to discharge her, telling them 'I'm dying' but medics assured her she would be fine.  She developed septicaemia after being released by doctors who had diagnosed her with glandular fever.

Futilitarians.  Established by the Labour Party, NICE decides which treatments and medications are to be utilized by the NHS based on the principle of "the greatest good for the greatest number."  Of course, this is not determined in a solely arbitrary fashion.  Specific formulas are employed to monetize the value of life.  Subjective judgments regarding "quality of life" and "suffering" are simmered down to a neat mathematical theorem by which life-sustaining treatments are awarded.

Bitter irony of socialized medicine.  A former director of Britain's National Health Service, which runs the country's socialized medicine system, has died while waiting 9 months for an operation.  The UK Daily Mail reports:  ["]A former NHS director died after waiting for nine months for an operation — at her own hospital.["]

The Tea Party rose in reaction to bad policy.  Nikki Phelps struggled against kidney cancer for 10 years, depleting the life savings of her family and eventually causing them to sell their home in order to supply her with Sutent, a common treatment for cancer.  Her insurance company refused to buy the drug.  Her insurance company was the government of England, which through its National Health Service, refused to supply her with this drug.  She died this spring.

Our Thelma and Louise moment.  Last week brought bad news for universal health care.  On Friday [3/5/2010], the Daily Telegraph exposed Britain's National Health Service's secret plan to close hundreds of hospital wards after the next general election.  Massive budget shortfalls will force Britain's government-run health care system to take this highly unpopular step in order to constrain costs.

Christian nurse ordered to remove crucifix.  A Christian nurse was 'forced to choose between her job and her faith' after being ordered to remove her crucifix at a hospital where Muslim staff wore headscarves unchallenged, a tribunal heard yesterday [3/29/2010].  Shirley Chaplin, 54, said she had been wearing the religious symbol around her neck without complaint for 31 years before she was ordered to hide it away.

IslamoCare:  The UK Department of Health recently announced that it would loosen hygiene rules for Muslim and Sikh doctors and nurses.  From now on, Muslim female staff will not need to wash their hands before procedures as it compromises their modesty.  Instead, they will have the admittedly less sanitary option of wearing disposable plastic over-sleeves.

More about The Religion of the Easily Offended.

An English Perspective on Health Care:  It is bemusing for an Englishman to hear President Obama tell stories of woe where Americans have been subjected to "unnecessary procedures" and "five tests instead of one," when people in England are finding it difficult to get approved access to necessary procedures and probably wouldn't mind a few extra tests.

Obama's Failing Presidency.  [Scroll down]  Since the NHS was established in 1948, hospital beds have dropped from over 800,000 to 160,000, while the number of bureaucrats has expanded to nine for each patient.  Tales of patient abuse are a never-ending, almost daily occurrence.  A week ago, the Daily Mail featured a story about a young woman who entered an NHS hospital with excruciating head pain.  Assuring her that it was merely a headache, the staff dumped her in a ward.  It was actually a rare brain infection.  When she began screaming uncontrollably as her brain was crushed against the inside of her skull, the staff tied her to a bed and left her.  The next time they checked, she was dead.

Up to 1,200 needless deaths, patients abused, staff bullied.  Not a single official has been disciplined over the worst-ever NHS hospital scandal, it emerged last night.  Up to 1,200 people lost their lives needlessly because Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust put government targets and cost-cutting ahead of patient care.  But none of the doctors, nurses and managers who failed them has suffered any formal sanction.

Brits' Dirty Laundry:  American health care is not British health care, at least not yet.  But if Democrats get their way, this country will rush to adopt a system much like the one that is killing people in Great Britain.

Labour hid ugly truth about National Health Service.  Damning reports on the state of the National Health Service, suppressed by the government, reveal how patients' needs have been neglected.  They diagnose a blind pursuit of political and managerial targets as the root cause of a string of hospital scandals that have cost thousands of lives.

Cheerleader, 15, had leg amputated after doctors dismissed her cancer.  A teenage cheerleader had to have her her leg amputated after doctors missed her cancer four times — telling her it was 'growing pains'.  Shannon Corr, 15, repeatedly visited GPs for over a two-month period complaining of agonising pains in her right knee and shin that left her struggling to walk.

Number of NHS bureaucrats increases six times as fast as number of nurses.  The workforce of bureaucrats in the NHS is growing six times as quickly as the number of nurses, according to official figures.  While the number of health service managers went up 12 percent in one year, the number of nurses increased by less than 2 percent — and the number of health visitors plummeted.

Neglected by 'lazy' nurses, man, 22, dying of thirst rang the police to beg for water.  A man of 22 died in agony of dehydration after three days in a leading teaching hospital.  Kane Gorny was so desperate for a drink that he rang police to beg for their help.  They arrived on the ward only to be told by doctors that everything was under control.

Scandal of lawyers' NHS payout bills.  The cost of fighting clinical negligence claims against the NHS is soaring and most of the payouts are going in the pockets of lawyers, figures show.  In one case, a law firm received 58 times as much as the victim.  In each of the past five years there have been examples of lawyers receiving more than 10 times the sum paid to the victim in compensation.

The sorry saga of the NHS and my year undercover in hospitals.  Sometimes, it's the little things that offer the greatest insights.  I was standing in a store cupboard with two outraged nurses.  It was dark and stuffy, but the nurses had insisted I inspect the soap.  It looked normal enough to me, but that was the problem.

He had beaten cancer, then doctors wrongly told him it had returned.  A grandfather who beat cancer was wrongly told the disease had returned and left to die at a hospice which pioneered a controversial 'death pathway'.  Doctors said there was nothing more they could do for 76-year- old Jack Jones, and his family claim he was denied food, water and medication except painkillers.

'50,000 people die from malnutrition a year in NHS hospitals,' claim Tories.  Almost 50,000 Health Service patients a year are dying while suffering from malnutrition in hospitals in England, shocking figures suggest.  A Government report says official statistics which claim that just 239 people a year die from malnutrition in hospital are 'very misleading'.

UK hospital care horrific — report.  An independent inquiry said on Tuesday [2/23/2010] it had found "shocking" standards of care at a National Health Service (NHS) hospital trust in the Midlands, including patients being left unwashed for up to a month.

Grandmother, 72, loses leg after hospital misdiagnosis.  Doreen Nicholls, 72, had her healthy leg amputated below the knee after she was wrongly told she had cancer.

Premature baby 'left to die' by doctors.  A young mother's premature baby died in her arms after doctors refused to help because it was born just before 22-week cut-off point for treatment.  Sarah Capewell, 23, gave birth to her son Jayden when she was 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy.  Although doctors refused to place the baby in intensive care, Jayden lived for two hours before he passed away at James Paget Hospital in Gorleston, Norfolk, last October.

Daughter saves mother, 80, left by doctors to starve.  An 80-year-old grandmother who doctors identified as terminally ill and left to starve to death has recovered after her outraged daughter intervened.

NHS is paying millions to gag whistleblowers.  NHS whistleblowers are routinely gagged in order to cover up dangerous and even dishonest practices that could attract bad publicity and damage a hospital's reputation.

Annals of Government Medicine.  Hospital conditions in the United Kingdom are frequently appalling, but the Basildon and Thurrock University National Health Service Hospitals are especially bad, with hundreds of preventable deaths occurring yearly.

Ambulance crew barred from helping girl 'because they were having their lunch'.  Ambulance staff battling to save a nine-year-old car crash victim were told the nearest back-up crew could not help as they were on their lunch break.  Bethany Dibbs was struck by a car as she crossed the road on her scooter and ended up in a coma with a fractured skull.

Sick Iraq war veteran dies after being given smoker's cancerous lungs in transplant.  An Iraq war veteran died after a hospital transplant gave him a pair of cancerous lungs donated by a smoker.

The End of Socialized Medicine?  Michael Moore's SiCKO is opening in Britain this week, but the British are not amused.  Anyone can extol the virtues of universal government-furnished health care, they say, when they have never had to use it.

'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed.  One million NHS patients have been the victims of appalling care in hospitals across Britain, according to a major report released today [8/27/2009].

Patient safety at risk after number of medication errors doubles in two years.  Patient safety is being put at risk because of medication errors which have more than doubled in two years, a report has shown.  More than 86,000 mistakes including drugs being given to the wrong person or the wrong dose being administered were recorded in a year.

Reform's Dead End.  Can a day go by without the British producing another story highlighting the disaster of their government-run system?  In the latest installment, we find that care for the dying might be a cause of death.

The babies born in hospital corridors:  Latest figures show that over the past two years there were at least:
 •  63 births in ambulances and 608 in transit to hospitals;
 •  117 births in A&E departments, four in minor injury units and two in medical assessment areas;
 •  115 births on other hospital wards and 36 in other unspecified areas including corridors;
 •  399 in parts of maternity units other than labour beds, including postnatal and antenatal wards and reception areas.

Obama and Friends Won't Have a Health Care.  Rest assured, if Congress embraces a government health care plan based on the British system, that's exactly what we'll get.  And friends of Obama won't have a health care in the world.

Socialized Medicine on Display.  Deaths involving Clostridium difficile in England and Wales doubled from 3,757 in 2005 to 8,324 in 2007, the vast majority of them elderly people, before a decline last year.  It appears that while restaurants are prosecuted for unsanitary conditions, hospitals are not.

Kidney cancer patients denied life-saving drugs by NHS rationing body NICE.  Thousands of kidney cancer patients are likely to lose out on life-prolonging drugs.  The NHS rationing body, NICE, has confirmed a ban on three out of four new treatments.  It has reversed its position on just one, Sutent, which will now be allowed for patients with advanced cancer.

Kidney cancer patients fail to win appeal for expensive drugs on the NHS.  Hundreds of patients with kidney cancer will continue to be denied expensive drugs which could prolong their lives, despite an appeal by patients' groups.

The NHS is flawed.  Here's the evidence...  The NHS is a cherished institution.  But it can no longer remain immune to such heartfelt anger from those that need it most.  A relic of a bygone age, it needs drastic surgery to ensure more flexibility, more freedom for innovation and more competition.

Britain's National Healthcare Looks Like Medieval Medicine.  Victims left for hours covered in blood, denied pain relief; elderly cancer patients lying in their own filth; dirty, chaotic wards akin to "war zones"; a shortage of basic equipment, including trolleys and thermometers; shouting nurses; ill-trained, badly supervised medics; disease outbreaks; starvation and dehydration; mounting piles of dead... Scenes from a hospital in war torn Chechnya, perhaps?  Mugabe's Zimbabwe?  Romania in the days of Ceaucescu?  The aftermath of Antietam?  The Middle Ages?  Why, no.  This was an English hospital the day before yesterday.

Single Payer Systems Kill.  Before American voters embrace either Hillary Clinton's universal-health scheme or Barack Obama's somewhat less dirigiste single-payer proposal, they should consider the avoidable deaths that plague the mother of all state-run medical programs:  Great Britain's big-government National Health Service.  Low-quality, taxpayer-funded health care killed more than 17,000 Britons in 2004, according to the TaxPayers' Alliance in London.

Number of complaints against the NHS soars.  More than 20 percent of those who complained about GP service said that the diagnosis of their illness had been incorrect or delayed because of the lack of time.  Most of these cases involved the eventual diagnosis of cancer.

A New Medical System Is Needed — for the British Nation.  [Scroll down]  Many more doctors and nurses have been hired.  Unfortunately their productivity has declined, as the number of patients seen by each physician has declined over the same period.  Britain has imported more than 20,000 physicians from Third World countries in the last three years, as after sixty years of experience the NHS has failed to attract and retain British physicians.

Cancer Patients Lose Shot at Longer Life in U.K. Cuts.  Jack Rosser's doctor says taking Pfizer Inc.'s Sutent cancer drug may keep him alive long enough to see his 1-year-old daughter, Emma, enter primary school.  The U.K.'s National Health Service says that's not worth the expense.  Rosser, 57, was told the cost of Sutent, $4,650 per treatment for his advanced kidney cancer, was too high for the NHS — the government agency that funds the nation's health care.  The resident of the town of Kingswood, in southwest England, has appealed the decision twice, and next month may find out if his second plea is successful.

Dying father ignored for six hours.  Clearly suffering, Stewart [Fleming] was clutching a note from his doctor saying he must be seen IMMEDIATELY.  But the railway signalman, 37, was left to die as a deadly virus ravaged his body and one by one his organs collapsed.

More about England's National Health Service:  [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]