Single Payer Means Filthy Hospitals

BEFORE WE all collapse before the tightly reasoned ideas of Michael Moore and his documentary about health care, SiCKO, let’s take a look at what “single-payer” health care really means in practice.

It means filthy hospitals. As in single-payer Britain. It means an epidemic of MRSA and HAI (Hospital-acquired infection.

Writes Harriet Sergeant:

Cases of MRSA in England and Wales have increased by 600% in the past decade alone, according to government figures. Britain has one of the worst records in Europe. The danger of contracting a bug here is more than 15 times higher than the next safest countries.

In US terms, with a population five times the British population, it would translate into 1,500,000 cases of HAI a year and up to 100,000 deaths from HAI a year.

What is going wrong in the hospitals of Britain? It’s the old story. No accountability and no delegated responsibility.

One former matron, now in audit work, pointed out the difficulty of disciplining a nurse for incompetence in the NHS today. Modern management is meant to “nurture” its employees. “You can’t bawl them out or they’ll sue you for harassment,” she explained.

Hospital cleaning in Britain is done by contract cleaners, which is fine, except that nurse supervisors have no authority to demand that the cleaners actually clean.

And nobody enforces standards. Hospital rules require a nurse to put on gloves and an apron before attending to a patient. But Sergeant saw a nurse come into a room and handle a patient without putting on gloves, right in front of a matron and an infection control manager. Here’s the reaction of the hospital officials:

The matron tut-tutted. “You’ve got to have eyes in the back of your head with these girls,” she said. The infection control manager nodded sympathetically. “Doctors are far worse,” she added.

No why would these women be so cavalier about this?

Lefties like Michael Moore want a world in which people just get world-class health care without lifting a finger.

But what happens if the people delivering world-class health care subscribe to the same world-view, that everything should be arranged for them? Suppose they believe that they have no responsibility beyond sitting around and tut-tutting?

Someone, somewhere has to lift a finger.

The best way to ensure that someone does care about delivering service is to make sure that it is delivered by a private company.

One thing that everyone agrees on, from the wackiest leftie to the rock-ribbed conservative. When a corporation falls down on the job, everyone agrees, it is not to be endured.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.