HEALTH UNCARE - BRITAIN

Posted at 7:14 a.m. ET

With the age of Obama about to begin, and the incoming president pledging universal health coverage, cautionary tales are in order.  Surely we want every citizen to be cared for, but how it's done is critically important.  This story is from Britain, which boasts a national health system.  But the tales of horror keep coming.  Is this what we want?

Clearly suffering, Stewart Fleming was clutching a note from his doctor saying he must be seen IMMEDIATELY.

But the railway signalman, 37, was left to die as a deadly virus ravaged his body and one by one his organs collapsed.

He was not admitted until six hours after arriving at the Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham, Kent, by which time it was too late.

This was not a wrong, snap decision by a hospital.  This was a problem with a bureaucratic culture.  His wife comments:

"I can't stop thinking that the last hours of his life were wasted. They were spent waiting around for help.

"His doctor obviously realised the severity of his condition. His life might have been saved if the hospital had given him something to fight the infection sooner."

She adds:

"I was told we had to go through the normal process, even with the letter from the doctor. We got to A&E before 5.30pm. He was finally called through to be examined at 11pm.

And what was the reaction of the people who run the hospital?  Get this:

A spokesman for the Medway NHS Foundation Trust said it was “saddened to hear of the death of Stewart Fleming”.

The spokesman added: "Mr Fleming came to Medway Maritime Hospital's Emergency Department on a day when it was experiencing long waits due to a high number of admissions.

"The situation was not unique to Medway - hospitals across the country were all experiencing a rise in demand for their services at the time.”

Do these people know the meaning of the term "emergency"?  Do they understand the concept of "priority"?  Can they read a physician's note?  Do they have any sensitivity?

I've noticed that the socialist left maintains a remarkable indifference to human life.  The ideology always comes first, and in this case the ideology requires government health care, no matter what the result.  We do, of course, have needless tragedies in the United States, even with private health care.  But the situation in Britain is dire.  We've reported on it here before.  It is not change we can believe in.

December 30, 2008.