The Death of Stewart Fleming: Why Socialized Medicine Doesn’t Work
All of you out there that favor a “single payer” or other government socialized health care system might want to read this:
A father-of-two died after a six-hour wait to be seen at an A&E department – despite having a note from his GP saying he must be treated immediately.
Stewart Fleming, 37, turned up at his local casualty unit with wife Sarah clutching a note from his doctor saying he must be seen ‘straight away’.
But instead of being sent to the head of the queue, Mr Fleming had to sit and wait in agony as his organs collapsed as a virus ravaged his body.
It was three hours before he was even assessed to see if he was a ‘priority case’, and even then it took another three hours for him to be admitted – six hours since he arrived at the hospital.
Doctors then realised the gravity of the situation and desperately started treating the infection, which was attacking his heart, kidneys and liver.
His nightmare began on December 12 when he arrived at the Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham, Kent.
Railway signalman Mr Fleming had been ill with flu-like symptoms for around a week and a half before he went to accident and emergency.
After a course of antibiotics had little effect, his GP recommended going to the hospital.
After belatedly receiving treatment, he remained in hospital for another week before having a leg amputated on December 19 – the day of his son Matthew’s 12th birthday.
He was then put in a drug-induced coma in a bid to save his life.
But, on December 27, after spending another week fighting the illness following his transferall to the Harefield Hospital, near Uxbridge, West London, Mr Fleming died.
The hospital in Kent has since apologised as it was busier than normal ‘due to a high number of admissions’.
But Mr Fleming’s wife of 15 years Sarah, 42, said the family, of Rainham, Kent, was devastated by her husband’s death and has demanded an explanation from hospital chiefs.
Mr Fleming had to sit and wait in agony as his organs collapsed as a virus ravaged his body.
God rest Mr. Fleming’s soul and God bless his family. His death is a lesson to all of us on the danger of socialized medicine. It doesn’t work and it always creates health care rationing that ends up killing innocent people.
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Sorry, although a sad loss for the family this is a bit of a non story and a reslt of the UK press whipping people into a frenzy. This gentleman was seen within the normal targets, and died two weeks later. Lots of people wait for 3 hours to get into hospital and die. If his doctor was seriously concerned he would have got an ambulance to “blue light” hmi to hospital so that he could be seen immediately. I believe the waiting time in ER’s in the states is considerably longer that what we see in the UK. The NHS provides an excellent service at the point of delivery and is for everyone, it does not depend on the sizeof your wallet.
As I’ve been known to say, “Nationalized Health Care combines the efficiency of FEMA with the compassion of the IRS”.
The NHS provides an excellent service at the point of delivery and is for everyone, it does not depend on the sizeof your wallet.
I’ll leave the first half of that sentence alone, as I’ve heard varying accounts of the excellence or lack thereof of the NHS, and I don’t know firsthand.
But in the U.S., acute/emergency care is mandated under EMTALA. U.S. hospitals cannot refuse to treat someone in an acute or emergent situation on the basis of ability or inability to pay.
(The one exception to this is the Veteran’s Administration Hospital System, and they will sometimes take non-VA patients on a limitied basis, though this is up to the discretion of the admitting hospital.)
According to NBC, the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta estimate average ER wait time at slightly more than one hour. I can’t speak to their methodology, but I shouldn’t think they’d be off by a factor of 3x.
The average wait time in Ontario for an MRI (non-acute, I hope,) is apparently 127 days. In Carleton, 78 days. The Children’s hospital there has a wait time of 19 days.
According to the Ontarian medical authorities themselves, the average wait time in the US is 3 days.
http://www.ices.on.ca/file/Access%20to%20MRI%20in%20Ontario%20-%20Addressing%20the%20information%20gap_printer%20friendly.pdf
Mind you, in the US, basically all recognized applications of MRI are covered by Medicaid, Medicare, and private healh insurance plans… in other words, to 85% of the population.
Does the NHS really work for everyone? I’m not asking rhetorically. Are there, for example, citizenship restrictions? Pre-existing condition requirements or other exclusionary protocols?