UK Cancels 50,000 Surgeries Because Flu's Straining Gov't Health Care
Score another ugly triumph for socialized medicine.
The United Kingdom – which has been struggling to make sense of its National Health Service since the days after World War II – is forcing about 50,000 patients to postpone surgeries this year because its overburdened hospitals are unable to handle an influx of flu patients.
That’s right. The health care system of one of the most developed countries in the world is being reduced to “Third-World conditions” by a common winter medical disorder, according to the U.K. Telegraph.
In the U.K. branches of the National Health Service are known as “trusts,” but in these days, there’s precious little trust patients can put in them – thanks to the glories of socialized medicine.
As the Telegraph reported:
“Sir Bruce Keogh, NHS medical director, on Tuesday ordered NHS trusts to stop taking all but the most urgent cases, closing outpatients clinics for weeks as well as cancelling around 50,000 planned operations.
“Trusts have also been told they can abandon efforts to house male and female patients in separate wards, in an effort to protect basic safety, as services become overwhelmed.
“The chaos follows a rise in flu cases when many hospitals were already close to capacity, with high numbers of frail patients stuck on wards for want of social care.”
This is because of the flu? Now, obviously flu can be serious, and even deadly. This year is already looking like it could be pretty bad in the United States, too, particularly in California, according to the Los Angeles Times.
But the United States isn’t postponing non-emergency surgeries to deal with flu cases.
For all liberals like to wail about the United States health system, the fact is it does wonders compared to the hell of socialized medicine in the U.K., where NHS spending eats up a third of public spending, according to a Reuters report on the flu’s impact on surgeries.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, in fact, delivered a national apology for allowing the country’s health system to fall so far behind.
“I know it is difficult, I know it is frustrating, I know it is disappointing for people and I apologize,” she said, according to Reuters.
But the thing is, May shouldn’t be apologizing for anything but being part of a political system that makes it the government’s responsibility for something as basic as health care. The fault is in socialized medicine, not in Theresa May.
The surgeries being postponed are considered non-emergency, of course, but that’s only because the government deems them that way. To the patients who were getting them – say, a new hip for a man who hasn’t walked well in years – they probably seemed pretty darn essential.
But for backers of socialized medicine, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and his supporters as well as too much of the Democrat Party, what individuals want or need doesn’t matter when it comes to decisions made by the state.
So, the government of the U.K. is in the business of canceling surgeries to deal with a medical crisis?
Score another triumph for socialized medicine.
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