Ken Berwitz

What will nationalized health care mean to the citizens of the US?  One way of trying to determine the answer is by looking at how it is working - or not working- elsewhere.

Here are excerpts from an article in yesterday's London Telegraph.  They provide a sobering insight into this question:

Ministers repeatedly ignored warnings about the safety of Britain's child heart surgery units, it can be revealed.

By Laura Donnelly, Health Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM GMT 06 Mar 2010

 

In 2001, a public inquiry into the deaths of dozens of babies at Bristol Royal Infirmary said cardiac units should be barred from carrying out paediatric surgery unless they met safety standards, including carrying out a minimum number of operations per year.

 

The recommendation to ensure surgery was only carried out by those skilled enough to perform the most delicate procedures was made to prevent the recurrence of a scandal such as Bristol – dubbed "the killing fields" in the 1990s.

 

Later this month, the Department of Health (DoH) will say no unit will be allowed to operate unless it has four surgeons and carries out at least 400 operations a year.

 

The ruling will mean around half of Britain's 11 child heart surgery units must close, while the remainder expand.

It means departments such as that at John Radcliffe Hospital, which suspended surgery last week following four deaths, and carried out just 100 operations in the last year, could not continue in their current form.

Today we reveal how:

• Ministers dismissed a warning in 2003 by the UK's most senior heart surgeon that half of Britain's units should be closed. As President of the Society for Cardiothoracic Surgeons (SCTS) of Great Britain and Ireland, Prof James Monro was commissioned by ministers to propose changes following the Bristol inquiry, yet "the Government did absolutely nothing" about his key demand, he told The Sunday Telegraph;

• Sir Bruce Keogh, medical director of the health service, told NHS bosses two years ago that he feared "another Bristol" tragedy because specialists were so thinly spread;

• The consultant told this newspaper "there has been frankly little progress" reorganising services to make them safer since the public inquiry reported in 2001. Sir Bruce recently told colleagues that failing to make changes now would leave "a stain on the soul" of his profession.

• Britain's leading children's heart charity says Labour ministers "ran scared" from introducing an overhaul of the specialist system which could have saved lives, and prevented major disabilities.

The public inquiry into the Bristol heart deaths scandal was the most damning in the history of the NHS.

It said botched heart operations killed 30 to 35 babies between 1990 and 1995, while over a longer period, up to 170 babies died who might have been saved elsewhere.

 

The document will say each service should carry out at least 400 and ideally 500 operations a year, and have 4 surgeons, so it can provide safe around-the-clock cover and perform a larger range of complex procedures.

As a result, about half of England's 11 centres will be earmarked to close.

 

Anne Keatley-Clarke, chief executive of the Children's Heart Federation, said families who had experienced the trauma of high-risk surgery were furious that politicians had delayed changes which could have saved lives.

"Parents who know about heart surgery are hugely angry and frustrated about this. The clinicians were ready to do this a long time ago, the parents expected it; we think the politicians ran scared and blocked it," Mrs Keatley-Clarke said.

 

She added: "We will never know how many children these delays have affected; whether that is in terms of needless deaths, or more children ending up with learning disabilities because they suffered neurological damage which could have been avoided." 

 Now a short Q and A:

-Q:  Could this happen here?  A:  Yes, of course it could.

-Q:  It is possible the government would allow it to happen?  A:  This is less a matter of allowing or not allowing than it is a matter of the government, which never runs anything efficiently or effectively, taking over health care.  But since you asked, governmental bureaucracies often (make that almost always) are more motivated by politics than anything else.  And when politics is the basis for health care decisions, bad decisions are sure to be made. 

-Q:  Why are you saying this is a government takeover?.  The Obama administration says it isn't, and the New York Times has an editorial this morning assuring me he is right.  A:  Because it is.  When private insurance "competes" against government, which has all the power to set the rules and not a care in the world about whether it does or does not operate profitably, private insurance goes out of business.  The fact that The New York Times, which has destroyed its credibility by making itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Obama & Co., says otherwise, doesn't mean squat.

The people of this country do not want this monstrosity.  But the Obama administration does - and clearly is unconcerned with what the people are saying. 

The only question is, how many Democrats are willing to lose their congressional seats to make Barack Obama happy?  And that answer is coming very, very soon.