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You Get What You Pay For

More horror stories from Britian’s NHS.

In creating “Sicko,” Moore must have overlooked some of the major news stories about the NHS from recent years. Stories such as one from the BBC stating that in September 2006 more than 6,000 patients in eastern England had to wait more than 20 weeks to begin treatment already prescribed by their doctors. Or a BBC story, also from 2006, noting that over 40,000 patients in Wales had to wait more than six months between being referred for, and actually having, an outpatient appointment. Or the recent London Times story regarding an admission, by Britain’s Department of Health, that some patients will have to wait more than a year for treatment, and that 52 percent of hospital inpatients are currently waiting more than 18 weeks to receive treatment.

Or stories such as those widely publicized in 2006 and 2007 about cancer patients who were denied access to life-saving cancer drugs by the NHS, which had refused to make them available because they were not “cost-effective” (i.e., cheap).

Or they might even have included the spate of stories in 2005 about the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant MRSA infections being spread throughout the National Health Service due to poor hygiene in NHS hospitals, and which in 2005 were blamed for 20 percent of the 5,000 deaths occurring each year in British hospitals. Or maybe even one 2006 story from a Glasgow newspaper that indicated that despite the supposed wonders of the NHS, average life expectancy in one part of the city was just 53 years.

These are all stories readily found through a quick Google search, and yet utterly ignored in Moore’s “assessment” of the relative quality of health care in the UK. They were disregarded, just like the stories of countless patients who have experienced some of the worst care in the world, courtesy of the NHS – like the 23-year-old with mild endometriosis who was told to have a full hysterectomy, because treating her illness with birth control pills or minor operations was “too expensive”; or the woman who was suicidal but was told it would take six months to get her to see a psychiatrist, despite the urgency of her condition.

Yes, but it’s FREE!  Don’t you get it?  It doesn’t matter how lousy the treatment you receive is, it’s FREE!  Everyone receives the same level of crappy service.  Except, of course, for the super wealthy, who jet off to America or other locales to private clinics for their own healthcare.  But for everyone else?  Hey, it’s FREE!

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