🚀 go-pugleaf

On 23 Jul 2004 11:10:34 -0700, geoffm@u1.netgate.net (Geoff Miller)
wrote:

<snipple>
>And that's what we can look forward to here, if HillaryCare ever
>comes to fruition.  What a thought: medical services run like the
>Department Of Motor Vehicles.

The family I visited there has been affected in the following ways by
the British system:

1.  Oldest brother died a few years ago (at age 47) due to pneumonia,
contracted in hospital while being treated for something else.
(Nosocomial infection due to miserably uneducated and undertrained
third world hospital staff resulting in filthy hospital conditions.)

2.  Friend, roughly my age, breast cancer victim, received no surgical
treatment for her cancer as it went undiagnosed for too long and had
spread.  Is currently recovering from radiation treatment to the
breast (we're talking open sores, people), chemo, and is on
maintenance meds with fingers crossed.

3.  Friend's now 4 y.o. niece went completely deaf a couple of years
ago due to inner ear infections and was undiagnosed despite her mom's
insistence that her child was deaf until they private paid for an ENT
to give her a hearing test...

And while we're at it...

4.  Friend's son,  of average intelligence, was undiagnosed for
learning disorders, is now unemployed, uneducated and has no further
options.  State funded programs for apprenticeships have been
discontinued, and the few school-based occupational training programs
can't find teachers to work for the low pay.

~Queenie

P.S.  The taxi driver told of visiting his brother who was in the
hospital for a brain operation.  He said there was a man in the next
bed for a similar operation, from Bosnia.  The Bosnian spoke no
English so every time the doctors wanted to communicate with him, they
would call Bosnia, get his daughter on the line to translate.  The
public picks up the phone bills as well as the hospital bill.