[MD] Privatised medicine? No thanks

[Ant McWatt]

Quoting ARLO J BENSINGER JR <ajb102 at psu.edu>:

>Second, when Platt assumed the example as about "social" medicine, it was 
>enough
>for him to denounce a system. When it was shown the example was about 
>"private"
>medicine, did you hear the same denouncement? No, of course not.

Platt commented April 15th:

Arlo has been criticizing me all along for not reading the article 
[properly] and now comes
up with the statement that it was about "private" medicine.

Ant McWatt comments:

That's the hilarious part of this thread.  Due to Platt's ignorance that 
much of the NHS has been privatised over the last 25 years by politicians 
following right-wing Thatcherite policies (as Case pointed out, this is a 
fact that would be known by any reasonably intelligent UK based reader of 
the Independent), he ended-up criticising "Grimecare" who are a privatised 
health organization even though a cursory Google check would have revealed 
this information to him.  No thesis building required.

Platt continued to dig his "rhetorical hole" even deeper, April 15th:

>I doubt if even a
>died-in-the-wool socialist like Ant McWatt would claim the story was about
>"private" medicine when the women was misdiagnosed twice in an NHS 
>hospital.
>But, I could be wrong.

Ant McWatt comments:

Yes, wrong again Platt.  On three counts:

Firstly, rather than a socialist, I'm a died-in-the-wool "MOQ-ite" (i.e. 
someone open to usefulness of a particular idea irrespective of its 
ideological heritage) unless, of course, you think an activity such as 
selling cars in a free market is a type of socialism.

Secondly, the women [Ms Christian] was misdiagnosed only _once_ in an NHS 
hospital.  See the Guardian article that Arlo highlighted for this detail 
at:

www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2056106,00.html

The private or public nature of this diagnosis is not revealed (by the 
Guardian or the Independent) so it could have been done by medical staff 
provided by a (relative expensive) private nursing agency despite being 
carried out _in_ an NHS hospital.

Thirdly, when the GP out-of-hours service was publically funded (as it was 
pre-Thatcher) it would have been a _doctor_ who would have spoken or visited 
a patient.  This damns the idea that private healthcare is better than 
publically funded healthcare as the Independent article shows:

"Two days later, [Ms Christian's] condition had deteriorated and she called 
the local GP out-of-hours service complaining that she had been vomiting a 
'black tar-like substance' and that she had severe pain, dehydration and 
constipation. The nurse [at "Grimecare"] who took the call said her case was 
not serious enough to call out the emergency doctor, and advised her to take 
laxatives for the constipation."

"The coroner said the nurse had 'totally failed' to deal with the case. 'Had 
Ms Christian been seen by a doctor at this stage ... it is surely inevitable 
that she would have been admitted,' he said. Even at this stage it was 
likely her life would have been saved, he added."

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/health_medical/article2444479.ece

So we see that it was the privatised nature of the out-of-hours service that 
ultimately resulted in this poor woman's death i.e. cutting costs by using a 
nurse to provide critical medical advice rather than a doctor.  Even at this 
stage [that Ms Christian contacted "Grimecare"] it was likely her life would 
have been saved...

With Platt generously showing us the limitations of privatised medicine, I 
now look forward to him demanding that a publically provided health system 
be set-up in South Carolina to prevent such  tragic and avoidable incidents 
happening there.



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