Back to Britain for more socialized medicine news

Thousands of families are expected to launch claims against NHS trusts after Alzheimer's were patients wrongly forced to pay for careThe cases of three families who have clawed back £300,000 they were wrongly charged by the NHS in care fees is the “tip of the iceberg”, a leading lawyer has warned.
But this stuff is supposed to be taken care of, I thought?
The family of Judith Roe, who died from Alzheimer’s aged 74 last October, won back £130,000 in care home fees her local NHS refused to pay because they deemed her problems “social” rather than “health”-related.

Last month the family of Marjorie Eyton-Jones, 88, who also suffered from Alzheimer’s, were reimbursed £165,000 they had paid in nursing home fees. Both women had to sell their homes to pay for care they were entitles to free.

And the family of Roger Johnson, 54, won back £51,500 after the NHS refused to pay for his care after he was left partially paralysed following a brain haemorrhage.
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Under current rules in England, individual PCTs decide who qualifies for free nursing care. The guidelines are open to interpretation. If a person’s needs are classed as “social”, they must fund the care themselves. It will only be paid if their needs are deemed “health”-related.

Miss Morgan, who represented Mrs Eyton-Jones, works for Hugh James solicitors, which has a specialist team dealing with continuing cases. They are acting for over 750 clients and have already recovered £8 million in wrongly paid nursing home fees.
Can you imagine having your health care turned over to a mess like this? Where all they have to do is say your problem is 'social' and therefore you have to pay for it(you're already paying taxes and 'fees' out the ass to cover this mess, but never mind that) yourself.
Another lawyer, Paul Ridge, of human rights specialists Bindman and Partners, said: “This is a substantial problem caused mainly by PCTs trying to save money. There have been a lot of changes to the guidelines down the years which has left people confused as to what they qualify for.

“And PCTs set such tight criteria it tens to lead to a ‘no’ answer.”
You can just imagine what some functionary would do with such rules here.

The other case I found today,
The distraught father of a teenage girl who died after her tonsillitis was deemed to be swine flu is calling for over-the-phone diagnosis to be scrapped.
"Over-the-phone"? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Following revelations that 16-year-olds are being employed at a swine flu call centre, there are also fears that many of those doling out advice and the anti-viral drug Tamilfu are not qualified to do so.
Ya think maybe?
Last week the parents of a girl of two told how their daughter died of meningitis after she was misdiagnosed.

In the latest case Charlotte Hartey was told she had swine flu over the phone by a local GP.

She was prescribed Tamiflu but her condition deteriorated and she was admitted to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital on July 29 where she died two days later after her lungs collapsed when bacteria overwhelmed her immune system.
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'Charlotte is not the first person to have died because of misdiagnosis. We are fighting a war against call centre advice.

'I am not putting blame on the doctors because they follow instructions from the Government, which says not to see swine flu victims.

'This is a breach of our human rights. The Government is restricting us from going to the doctor.'
Yes it is, sir; that's what you get with socialized medicine.
Mother-of-three Jasvir Gill, 48, of Leicester, also died this month days after being misdiagnosed with swine flu.

She began suffering from a sore throat and vomiting and was told to take Tamiflu in a telephone diagnosis.

Around 12 hours later she had a heart attack and died from blood poisoning caused by meningitis.
And this is the kind of crap we'll be seeing in great numbers here if Obama and Barney Frank & Co. get their way and shove this mess down our throat.