Socialized Medicine/Rationed Care/Universal Health Care Nightmares and Horror Stories from Around the World

Just the tip of the iceberg regarding the horrors of socialized medicine:

• Woman gives birth on pavement outide hospital after being refused ambulance (UK)
  
  
• Badly burned 1-year old boy denied ambulance (Sweden)


• Baby boy died minutes after birth because hospital had no one on night duty to do C-section, due to cost-cutting policy (UK)


• Doctors & hearing specialists never noticed that boy, 11, deaf for 9 years, had a cotton bud stuck in his ear, regains hearing after it pops out (UK)


• For six months, Swedish doctors don't notice fist-sized brain tumour in woman, prescribe painkillers for tension headaches (Sweden)


• Forgotten patient dies in Stockholm emergency room, found an hour later unconscious, splayed out on the bed, and covered in vomit, and hospital blames lack of personnel, insufficient training and extremely heavy workload during the summer (Sweden)


• Girl, 3, has heart operation cancelled three times in one month because of bed shortage (UK)


• Heart patient dies while anesthesiologist was asleep, wearing earplugs while on-call at a hospital, missed an alert that a patient’s heart had stopped (Sweden)


• Patient bled to death following routine gallstones operation after doctors were too busy to assess her, died in agony after doctors ignored her cries for help: "I need water, I'm dying" (UK)


• Italian doctors killed the “wrong” child after a 38-year-old woman requested to have one of her pre-born twins aborted, instead of taking the life of the twin suffering from Down Syndrome, doctors accidentally aborted the healthy baby (Italy)


• Man dead 'for some time' in Winnipeg emergency room before staff alerted by someone in the waiting room that he appeared dead, patient was in hospital over 34 hours, never assessed by a triage nurse and was not registered as a patient seeking care (Canada)


• Man dies after home health nurse overdoses meds, gives him six times his dose of Alzheimer's medication, temp nurse apparently not trained properly (Sweden)


• In severe pain, man pulls out 13 of his own teeth with pliers because he couldn't find an NHS dentist, could not afford private care, tried to get in at 30 dentists over the last eight years, but was never able to find one to take on NHS patients (UK)


• Miscarrying mother told 'life's a bitch' by NSW ER doctor, was 12 weeks pregnant and bleeding, told to come back the next day (Australia)


• Mother in need of a kidney transplant denied her dead daughter's organs, which went to strangers at top of NHS waiting lists, even though dying daughter requested that her organs go to her mother (UK)


• Aborting mother forced to give birth alone in the toilet of 'flagship' NHS hospital, with only her mother to help her, then her dead baby almost discarded with hosptal waste (UK)


• Twenty-one year old woman with untreated gum disease couldn't find a dentist, eventually has all her teeth removed, won't have dentures fitted for at least 6 months (UK)


• Patient left with broken neck for two months after car crash, diagnosed twice with whiplast, no x-ray ordered by doctors, sent home twice from hospital in extreme pain, later has neck surgery (UK)


• Thousands of patients forced to wait up to five hours in ambulances and hospital corridors before they can even join the queue for urgent treatment in short-staffed NHS hospitals (UK)


• DIY dental patients pull own teeth as NHS contract falters, others go without dental treatment, or fill their own teeth with clove oil and Polyfilla, or affix crowns with Superglue, or use a screwdrive to scrape off plaque - eight years after Labour promised dental treatment for all, system is at the breaking point (UK)


• After days of agony, seventy-six year old pensioner/grandmother forced to pull out her own teeth after 12 NHS dentists refuse to treat her (UK)


• Resident in elderly living facility found dead after six weeks, only discovered because stack of mail piled up outside woman's mailbox (Sweden)


• Did Canada's universal health care kill actress Natasha Richardson after skiing accident? Quebec province lacks a medical helicopter sytem to airlift patients to major trauma centers (Canada)


• 'Wrong' woman given abortion drug after nurse mixed up patients with same first name (UK)


• Tired of waiting for years for public dental treament, man pulls his own rotten tooth (UK)


• Three million people attempt do-it-yourself dentristy (UK)


• NHS scandal: Nine-year old boy with lacerated finger, no surgeon on duty, dies after orthopaedic surgeon re-uses breathing apparatus which malfunctions, doctor says reusing equipment commonplace because NHS is so short of funds (UK)


• Swede x-rayed 999 times by accident, subjected to 80 seconds of radiation, equivalent to 999 exposures, due to a pipe that had fallen on the release pedal (Sweden)


• Stroke patients left without speech therapy (Sweden)


• Seven doctors miss a six-centimetre lollipop stick in boy's nose for eleven months (Sweden)


• Man dies of heart attack after two-hour wait for ambulance, repeated calls by his mother for help (Sweden)


• Fifty-year old man dead for two days on hospital toilet before being discovered (Sweden)


• Lung cancer patient dies of morphine overdose after being accidentally injected with ten times the recommended dosage at a hospice (Sweden)


• Swedish hospital in HIV needle mixup, man contracts HIV after nurse injects him with syringe previously used on an HIV patient (Sweden)


• Heroin addicts 'let down by healthcare,' not getting the treatment they need (Sweden)


• Doctors send home boy with pen stuck in his skull after a fall, no x-rays, stitched up and sent home, returns to hospital with headaches, fever, dizziness and meningitis (Sweden)


• Doctors' oversight costs man his testicle, botched diagnosis by a head doctor, severe testicular pain from testicular torsion misdiagnosed until too late to save man's testicle (Sweden)


• Six-day old baby girl died after hospital sent her home twice, even though her father rushed her to the hospital with vomiting and excessive sleeping (Sweden)


• Woman in hospital dash forced to give birth on the side of the road after her husband was informed there were no ambulances available to take her to the hospital, with the nearest maternity ward was 55 km away (Sweden)


• Veterinary hospitals now doing x-rays and MRIs for human patients waiting up to a year to have the images done in the public hospital system (Sweden)


• 1,000 breast cancer errors a year in Sweden, study finds (Sweden)


• Swedish surgeon and midwife forget two cloth swabs when sewing up a woman who had just given birth, who suffers fever and infection, must return two times to have swabs removed (Sweden)


• One in three elderly British patients suffered botched operations ansd poor outcomes as a result of surgery by Sweden's so-called 'flying doctors' brought in to cut waiting times in the UK (UK/Sweden)


• Swedish doctor reprimanded for accidental abortion while performing an hysteroscopy on pregnant patient (Sweden)
  


• Two Swedish doctors cleared after mistakenly stitching a man's bladder to his large intestine, thought something wasn't quite right, but were distracted by heavy workload and social problems, no punishment for doctors because there was no 'deliberate carelessnss'(Sweden)


• Swedish clinic sterilizes the wrong man, gives vasectomy to man who came in for a routine biopsy of prostate, instead of another man sceduled for vasectomy the next day, no checking of identity, no checking of schedule (Sweden)


• Sweden rules 'gender based' abortions are legal


• Starved to death in an NHS hospital: stroke patient unable to swallow was never fitted with a feeding tube, left without food for 26 days, dies


• Sixty-six babies in a year left to die after surviving botched abortions, babies were able to breathe on their own, lived for hours before dying (UK)


• "Salt Death" baby is identified, premature baby died from suspected overdose of salt (saline drip), no inquiry will be made into death of the baby, only an apology to his family "for any shortcomings in our care of their child

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