Socialized healthcare in England leaves 1 in 8 patients deprived of adequate food or water

Thursday, May 12, 2016 by: J. D. Heyes
Tags: socialized healthcare, National Health Service, food deprivation

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(NaturalNews) There is an old expression that goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink." That essentially means you can show someone how to do something, but you can't make them do it.

It is the same with facts and truth: You can present someone with knowledge but you can't force them to accept it. So it is with the hard realities of socialized medicine; many people will never believe it is the completely wrong approach to healthcare, no matter how many examples of failure you provide them.

Britain's healthcare system has been declining for years

Take Britain's healthcare system. Once held up as a shining example of how a rich, Western nation can provide socialized, government-run healthcare, the National Health Service in Britain is deteriorating, and quickly, as noted in a recent story from the Daily Mail Online, which reported recently that one in eight NHS patients are literally starved of food or water in their final days, with one-in-ten dying in agony with too little pain relief.

In addition, according to official government records, nearly one-quarter of families have said their relatives were not provided adequate nutrition in their last days, while 13 percent reported that their loved ones were deprived of food, and 12 percent said water was withheld.

What's more, nearly 20 percent said that hospital personnel – doctors and nurses who are very likely overworked and understaffed – treated patients with respect and dignity only "some of the time" or "never," families say.

Ten percent rated the care their relatives received overall as "poor."

Not good for a nation that touts its healthcare system as superior to those in the U.S. and elsewhere – though Obamacare has certainly moved our healthcare system further towards Britain's than the free-market, incentives-based system it used to be.

The Daily Mail Online reported further:

The shocking figures, released today by the Office for National Statistics, came from the National Survey of Bereaved People.

This is a poll in which, for the past five years, relatives have been asked about the treatment their loved one received in hospitals, care homes, hospices in England in the three months before their death.

It also included care provided in their own homes, by [general practitioners] and [healthcare] services....

To be sure, three-quarters of respondents rated the overall quality of end-of-life care as outstanding, excellent or good, while just 10 percent of care was rated as poor. But three-quarters support in a national system that is highly touted as a global example, when put in context, isn't that encouraging.

Varied care depending on means

There were some other alarming statistics too. People living in the most deprived areas of England were more likely to rate end of life care as poor – 29 percent – than those living in the least-deprived regions of the country (22 percent), indicating there appears to be a drop off in quality of care for poorer residents, based solely on feedback.

What's more, those who had loved ones die in a hospital were more likely to rate their care as worse than any other place of death, which seems to indicate a decline in quality of care in English hospitals for those nearing the end of their lives.

Nearly one in three people said hospital care was just fair or outright poor compared to 18 percent for home care.

"The survey revealed a quarter of families claim their relative was denied food and drink before their death," the news site noted.

There are additional reports dating back a few years documenting Britain's declining quality of healthcare, which you can reader here, here and here.

Sources:

DailyMail.co.uk

LATimes.com

CNBC.com

Telegraph.co.uk

ONS.gov.uk

Science.NaturalNews.com