So much for that so-called workers' paradise known as BushAmerica. The American health care system keeps getting worse and worse, with no action to remedy it on the horizon.
In the mid-'90s, The Last Word reported that American medical centers were plagued by billing mistakes and erroneous procedures that sometimes endangered patients' lives. (If I remember correctly, a hospital gave a pregnancy test to a man. I'm not sure if that was mentioned in the article though.) It's much worse now. Now hospital medication errors are widespread and increasing rapidly.
The Institute of Medicine says that every year at least 1,500,000 Americans are injured because they're given the wrong medication or dosage. Just in 7 years, serious injuries have more than doubled, and deaths have tripled (from 5,000 in 1998 to 15,000 in 2005).
There's a host of factors behind these mind-boggling blunders. Sometimes the doctor's handwriting is illegible so patients get the wrong drug. Someone said that they heard of charts hanging on the wrong beds in hospitals. A lot of it is because of people in the health care field being forced to work hours that are too long, especially in for-profit facilities.
An article in the American Medical Association's own journal says America's health care system is the country's third-leading cause of death, with 225,000 dying per year due to bad health care ranging from unnecessary surgery to medication errors to strange hospital infections.
The "regulation for thee, not for me" types always grasp at straws when confronted with another story about the decline of the American medical system. You know they're about to lose the argument when they get down to their cry that it's actually not so bad because the American system is still better than other countries for people in higher income groups. (That's supposed to even things out, I guess.) Well, that isn't true either. Even the rich and famous aren't safe from the growing pandemic of medication errors. At a hospital in Los Angeles, actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins were given 1,000 times the intended dosage of a blood thinner called heparin.
Such an occurrence wasn't just an isolated incident, and it's serious: Three babies died at a hospital in Indiana recently when the exact same thing happened to them.
One is reminded of the story a few years ago about the girl who died at an American hospital because they gave her blood that was of the wrong blood type.
After seeing 'Sicko', there's no excuse why people should be forced to tolerate such an incredibly bad health care system.
(Source: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/ideas/bal-id.mistakes25nov25,0,461400.story;
http://www.health-care-reform.net/causedeath.htm;
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-twins21nov21,0,597898.story?coll=la-home-center)
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Hospital errors soaring
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If the errors in the American health system don't kill you, the waiting list will.
ReplyDeleteMy uncle needed cancer surgery (which he needed immediately) but was placed a WAITING LIST for FIVE MONTHS.
This was not in a third world country. This was IN America, IN a developed area.
He was one of the lucky ones in that he survived. For every one who survived, I bet there is one more who didn't make it.
Tim, what do you want done to fix it? You never ever offer ideas for solutions, just ranting complaints. Good editorial writers don't just point out flaws, they tell readers what they think should be done about it. And don't just oversimplify the issue by saying "We need universal health care" or "we need government regulation." Be specific.
ReplyDeleteYou're very good with words, but all you're doing here is rehashing what you read somewhere else.
And I've told you before to stop citing "Sicko" as gospel. Michael Moore stated what his agenda was before he even started filming it, so you can't claim he went into it without bias. He knew what he wanted to convey and he was very selective in what he "documented."
Also, there is no "regulation for thee, not for me crowd." There's only three people who regularly comment here, me and the two who respond to whatever I write. That's not a crowd and I've never advocated regulation for "thee."
I seriously doubt what you are saying, Reality.
ReplyDeleteIt can take time to get things diagnosed because you have to schedule various doctors appointments and tests and then wait for the results, but if you're diagnosed with cancer they'll begin treatment within days. If your uncle's doctor told him he had to wait 5 weeks, let alone 5 months, why didn't he go to another doctor or a different hospital? He'd be an idiot not to.
The only reason they wouldn't operate is if there are other medical concerns that made surgery too risky. I know a cancer patient who had to wait more than month to begin chemotherapy after surgery because where they operated hadn't healed enough.
Does this blog have an ignore feature?
ReplyDeleteWe've gone round and round with 'scheffbd' for a long time and he never gets it.
So the "regulation for thee, not for me crowd" is a crowd of one...
ReplyDeleteA crowd of one who seems like many.
Scheff: I guarantee you that if somebody in any other county claimed they had a waiting list for anything medical (even if they had no proof) you'd use this as "proof" of how bad the "communist" medical system is there.
I dont think I've ever put on a "list" so to speak but I have (in the US) have had to wait inordinately long times for various things....often because the insurer has to approve it.
If a country has to delay health care just so an insurer can approve it, that's pretty fucking sad.
Tom,
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know there is no feature on Blogger that allows you to hide dissenting opinions.
But I try to help my friends on the fringes out, so here's what I'd suggest if you don't want to see comments other than total agreement with Tim Brown: Don't read the comments under "scheffbd said …"
Cruella:
ReplyDeleteIf he had said he had to wait months for knee surgery or something that wasn't life threatening, I wouldn't question it. But telling a cancer patient, insured or not, he has to wait 5 months to remove the tumor is medical negligance and the doctor and hospital would lose their credentials for that.
Maybe that they didn't lose their credentials is part of the problem?
ReplyDeleteThe news is full of stories of doctors like Swango (or whatever that guy's name was) who should have lost their credentials but didn't until it was too late.
If what Reality claims about a 5-month wait was actually true, and if I were his uncle, I wouldn't need a committee of bureucrats to tell me I've got a bad doctor.
ReplyDelete