Oct/090
The Price of Cost Cutting:
The Price of Cost Cutting
Sarah Palin has been ridiculed over and over for bringing up the notion of death panels, yet if we follow into the footsteps of other countries with national healthcare that’s exactly what we’ll have. Sure take away all the platitudes and politically correct language and what you are left with is a government bureaucracy that has the power to decide life and death.
You say that couldn’t happen here, well it could and will. You say we have the same situation with the insurance companies, I say you are half way right. But with the insurance companies you at least have options. You could switch companies, you could go through a charity or hospital that can help, or you can raise the money to pay yourself. In many countries with national healthcare, once the government says no you have no other choice.
This article is one of a growing many that explains the disaster of the government running end of life care.
Mar/080
NHS dentists play as patients wait
From The Sunday Times
March 30, 2008
Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Editor
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3646522.ece
Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care.
Many have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7m people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist.
Patients have been told they must either pay privately or return in April when the new work year begins. People suffering from toothache have been advised to go to hospital.
Areas affected include Merseyside, Derbyshire, Birmingham and East Sussex. Eddie Crouch, secretary of the Birmingham local dental committee, estimates that up to a third of dentists in the West Midlands have run out of work or have had to reduce the number of NHS patients they treat. “Patients in pain have had to shop around to find a dentist that has not used up their quota,” he said.
The British Dental Association fears that other dentists have been unable to meet their quotas and will be forced to pay back thousands of pounds to the NHS.
The health department says dentists should have managed their workload throughout the year.