Eideard

People living in England enjoy better health than Americans, despite less investment in healthcare, research published in the US has revealed.

Across all ages, US residents tend to fare worse in terms of diabetes, high cholesterol and heart disease markers, data on over 100,000 people show…

The reason remains a mystery, says the US team…

Not a mystery if you pay attention to the bullshit cranked out by our bought-and-paid-for politicians.

Despite the greater use of health care technology in the US, Americans receive less preventive health care than their English counterparts…

But despite looking, the researchers did not find any real evidence that differences in obesity, alcohol consumption or physical activity were to blame.

Smoking may be a factor, but Dr Melissa Martinson and colleagues doubt it because even younger Americans who have not yet been exposed to decades of tobacco smoke appear to be in worse health than English counterparts.

And although a larger share of Americans are uninsured or under insured compared to populations in England or other European countries, even groups with good access to health insurance experienced worse health than people in England…

A spokesperson from the Department of Health said: “The NHS offers care free to all at the point of use and based on need.

“Whilst in some areas our outcomes may be favourable compared with those in the US, we are still clear that we have a long way to go before we achieve outcomes comparable with the best performing health systems.

“That is exactly why we are modernising the NHS.”

My mates in the UK complain about the NHS even more than their peers – and my friends – in the GWN complaining about Health Canada.

We have succeeded in modernizing little or nothing.

Laura Hall looks nervously into the tape recorder. “I feel like I’m at the police station,” she says. Hall knows a lot about police stations. The 21-year-old is Britain’s most notorious drunk – the only person in the country with an order banning her from all pubs, clubs and off-licences. She is the poster girl for Booze Britain. Newspapers have revelled in the stories of her 40-plus arrests, her numerous assaults on police officers, her two prison sentences, the number of pints and vodka shots that will see her through a night out. Last year district judge Bruce Morgan said of her 29 drink-fuelled convictions: “I don’t think I have seen a more deplorable record… A female with a record like this – it’s absolutely despicable and represents all that is rotten in society nowadays.”

At the pub next door to the railway station in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, the barman tells me all about Laura Hall. Is this one of her locals? No, he says, but they know what she looks like, and what to expect if she comes in. What’s that? Verbal abuse, physical abuse, the works, he says.

But Hall hasn’t been drinking for six months now. She has been in rehab in Portugal, and is now hoping to make a fresh start. Although she saw doctors and a psychiatrist in Britain, she was not offered a place on an alcohol rehabilitation programme on the NHS. It was only when the private clinic in Portugal contacted her that she believed it would be possible to kick her habit.

Hall’s story has been used as a parable of a country in decline, but while it might reflect some disturbing patterns among today’s youth, it is also highly unusual. She did not come from a broken or dysfunctional family, she did not suffer abuse, she was not penniless or destitute. Her parents had good jobs (her father runs a building company, her mother is a health visitor), her twin sisters have no issue with drink. As a little girl she looked angelic and dreamed of being a ballerina.

Hall says it’s just something in her. She first had a drink at 13, and that was it. She can’t remember what she drank, just the effect it had on her. “I felt something had been turned on inside me. I wasn’t scared to do anything. I was more confident. It gave me a great feeling.” Yes, she got a hangover the next day, and, yes, it put her off. But not for long…

Read the rest of this entry »

The well-worn notion that patients in the United States have unfettered access to the most expensive cancer drugs while the United Kingdom’s nationalized health care system regularly denies access to some high-cost treatments needs rethinking…

Critics of the U.K. system say care there is rationed — that patients are denied some expensive therapies so that better health care can be provided to the nation as a whole. Critics of the U.S. system say care is rationed here, too — that only those with the very best insurance and those who can afford sky-high out-of-pocket expenses have meaningful access to any and all high-priced therapies, especially at the end of life.

The authors found that with regard to very expensive cancer drugs, both characterizations are largely correct. “The issue is not whether rationing is a good thing or a bad thing,” Doctor Ruth Faden says. “The issue is what we should do about extraordinarily expensive treatments, some of which do very little to improve how well or how long people live.” At the same time, she adds, “there is no ethically defensible reason why some Americans have access to expensive cancer drugs and some do not.”

“Policy makers and our society now need to do the hard work of developing a reasoned, evidence-based system of using health care resources wisely, and the first step is to engage in an honest and transparent conversation about the values that should guide these decisions, a conversation that is informed by facts, not politics,” she says.

RTFA. Doctor Faden goes into the details.

The fact remains, unless you have the bucks – here in the States – you are screwed.

A cannibalistic killer who murdered three people and ate one of them had behaved “normally” before the attacks, two NHS inquiries revealed today…

He had not been a psychiatric patient prior to his first attack. In March 1993, Peter Bryan, then aged 24, used a hammer to beat to death Nisha Seth, the 21-year-old daughter of his employer, in King’s Road, Chelsea, London…

After seven and a half years-he was transferred out to lower security institutions…Then, he was allowed out for the afternoon as an informal patient. “He was acting quite normally and showed no obvious signs of mental disorder,” the first NHS London report observed…

At 7.30pm Brian Cherry’s female friend arrived at his flat and pushed open the door. She found Bryan wearing no clothes on his upper body, sweating and holding what looked like a kitchen knife. He told her: “Brian Cherry is dead…”

Cherry’s body had been dismembered. On the cooker was a frying pan containing parts of Cherry’s flesh that had been cooked. Bryan told the officer: “I wanted his soul.”

When charged with murder, he told officers: “I ate his brains with butter. It was really nice.” After a short period he was transferred to Broadmoor hospital…

Bryan had only been in the hospital for 10 days when he strangled fellow patient Richard Loudwell with a trouser cord in an unobserved dining room of the high-security institution.

When Bryan was admitted he was put in seclusion initially. Medical staff, the report said, thought his case was “straightforward and that if he was compliant with his medication he would not be dangerous…

NHS London confirmed that no disciplinary action was taken against any staff as a result of the two killings.

Phew! I’m pleased to hear that. We can’t have something negative happening as the result of someone – or is it no one – assuming responsibility.

That’s right. This is about the Tories and the NHS. But, their solution to managing health care ain’t a whole boatload different from our homegrown rightwing nutballs.

Got a problem with government management of something as basic as Social Security or Medicare? Turn it over to corporate control.

The Conservatives have promised huge cost savings for the NHS by scrapping government plans for a central database of patient records.

Proposals include electronic medical notes being stored locally by GPs and hospitals and patients having online access to their medical records.

IT firms such as Google or Microsoft could host the information…

The Tories are promising NHS trusts a choice of computer systems, rather than having a single one imposed.

Every patient would have a username and password and could update their records with information like blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Shadow health minister Stephen O’Brien insisted these separate systems would be “inter-operable”, allowing information to be accessed in different locations.

He said: “You want to have your data held locally and that should be with the person you trust most in the health service, which will be your GP.”

You can go ahead and read the rest of this crap if you wish. The BBC sort of has to report it in the interest of Fair Play. They are better at it than Fox Snooze, anyway.

But, the British flavor of neocon ain’t any brighter about technology than their Republican peers.