BAD MEDICINE

Brit collapses with ruptured appendix… three weeks after UK doctors “removed it”

Daniel Bates reports that Mark Wattson, 35, from Swindon may have been the victim of botched surgery after he had to have his appendix removed twice.

To his shock, surgeons from the same team told him that not only was his appendix still inside him, but it had ruptured — a potentially fatal complication.

Wattson first went under the knife on July 7 after experiencing severe abdominal pain for several weeks. He was discharged but exactly a month later he had to dial 999 after collapsing in agony.

Wattson was readmitted to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon after his appendix ruptured.

In a second operation it was finally removed, leaving Wattson fearing another organ might have been taken out during the first procedure.

Following the second operation his incision became infected and he was admitted to hospital for a third time for treatment.

Paul Gearing, deputy general manager for general surgery at Great Western Hospital NHS Trust, said: “We would like to apologise if Mr Wattson felt dissatisfied with the care he received at Great Western Hospital.”

Wattson has been unable to confirm what, if anything, was removed in the first operation.

Compensation payments to NHS patients have risen by 20 per cent in the past year to a record high of £769million. At this rate more than £2million a day is being paid over claims against the Health Service.

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SCAPEGOAT HUNTING: PLAYING THE RACE CARD TO SILENCE CRITICISM

Every Critic a Racist

John Stossel

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s supporters promised that his election would allow America to “transcend race.”  Among the headlines:

The Boston Globe: “Obama shows an ability to transcend race”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:  “Obama’s success suggests we can transcend race”

But of course that hasn’t happened. Jonah Goldberg writes:

It was Obama’s supporters who hinted, teased, promised, and prophesied that Obama would help America “transcend race.” But now, it is they who shrink from their own promised land…

From Day 1, Obama’s supporters have tirelessly cultivated the idea that anything inconvenient for the first black president just might be terribly, terribly racist.

Goldberg has plenty of examples:

For instance, actress Janeane Garofalo summed up the tea parties thusly: “This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up.”

In an ABC News story about how racist white militias are somehow connected to town-hall protests, Mark Potok of the dismayingly left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center insists Obama has “triggered fears among fairly large numbers of white people in this country that they are somehow losing their country.”

Come on. Every president eventually is criticized by the media – even one as “transcendent” as Obama. The President’s supporters should engage his critics with facts, not charges of racism

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DANCING WITH WOLVES

Be Careful What You Want, You May Get It

Yuri N. Maltsev, an economist at Carthage College, Kenosha, Wisconsin, who worked on Mikhail Gorbachev’s economic reform team, understands the downside of socialized medicine.  

Maltsev’s essay, What Soviet Medicine Teaches Us, addresses the similarities between the goals stated by Brother O for Obamacare, and those proclaimed by the communists as advantages for their “cradle-to-grave” socialization of medicine in the Soviet Union.  The  chanted “healthcare is a right”  became the “constitutional right” of Soviet citizens.

Countries that adopt socialized medicine create a two-tier system with completely different levels of service. One tier is for the masses and the other is for the party “bureaucrats and their intellectual servants.” Maltsev proves that a government monopoly makes the quality and service of healthcare appalling for the tier covering the masses.  

Maltsev contends that socialized medicine has not raised the general health or living standards anywhere, but it does create massive government bureaucracies, job-destroying mandates, price controls that lead to shortages and poor quality of service, and rationing of healthcare by government bureaucrats.

“After seventy years of socialism, 57 percent of all Russian hospitals did not have running hot water, and 36 percent of hospitals located in rural areas of Russia did not have water or sewage at all,” Maltsev writes. “Isn’t it amazing that socialist government, while developing space exploration and sophisticated weapons, would completely ignore the basic human needs of its citizens?”

In supporting Obamacare, Americans “are like sheep demanding the wolf.” What remains to be seen is will the sheeple recognize the wolf before it’s too late?

I.M. Kane

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