Cancelled...

Imagine you are the parent of a three year old who is in need of life saving surgery. No worries, you say - I have government provided health care. My child will get the life saving treatment she needs....the government said they would provide it........

A three-year-old girl waiting for vital heart surgery has had her operation cancelled three times in as many weeks because of a shortage of hospital beds.

Ella Cotterell was due to have an operation to widen her aorta artery in her heart on Monday at Bristol Children's Hospital, but her surgery was cancelled 48 hours before because all 15 beds in the intensive care unit were full.

No before all you lefties start screeching - yes I fully understand and admit that we have had situations here where a hospital's beds are all full. I am NOT saying that never happens here. However, the fact that there are only 15 ICU beds in this particular hospital does say something about state of health care in Britian. Especially in a speciality hospital such as Women's and Childrens Hospital where little Ella was to have her surgery.

This is not necessarily a failure of universal care as much as it is a failure of today's modern medicine administration. While we don't know from the article the nature of the "emergencies" that caused little Ella's surgery to be cancelled, we have to wonder about a system that does not have the flexibility to move the surgery to a different hospital (this child's aorta is very weak and could rupture at any moment) or one that, if rescheduling is the absolute only option, has to wait weeks before they can even give you a new date!

The problem with health care in America (and as we see here in the UK as well) is that it is not responsive to the patients - only to insurance and insurance administrators. Changing out administrators (from insurance companies to the government) is not going to make health care better. Making the system more accountable to the patients will - which is why Universal Healthcare is, in the end, a real killer.