Hundreds Die Needlessly in British Healthcare

Waiting lists in Britian created by their bureaucratic, monopolistic healthcare system, causes hundreds to die each year. Hillary, Obama, Edwards, and all the other Democrats want to lead us down the same route.

BBC - Up to 500 heart patients die each year while they wait for potentially life-saving surgery, a report has said.

An editorial in the British Medical Association journal Heart said that the only way to prevent these deaths would be to perform the operations as soon as the heart condition was diagnosed.

This is what happens in the private sector, it said, but NHS patients are often put on a waiting list because of other pressures to health service resources.

Only an "enormous injection" of cash could change the situation.

However, the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said it was inevitable that hospitals would have to prioritise treatments and prevention was just as important as surgery.

'Inevitable deaths'

Ben Bridgewater, a heart consultant at Wythenshawe Hospital in Manchester, wrote the article.

He was reviewing the findings of two studies - one from New Zealand and one from Holland - both of which indicated that it was inevitable that some patients would die while waiting for surgery.

This was even true in New Zealand, where a thorough system of clinical assessment is supposed to ensure the patients who need treatment most get it first.

Doctors in the UK have long called for such a system to be introduced in the NHS.

But, because any waiting at all seemed to result in some additional deaths, immediate surgery was the only way to cut mortality.

He said: "This currently happens in the UK in the private sector but will not happen in the NHS without an enormous injection of resources."