Behold, the wonders of government-run, single-payer healthcare (via the Daily Telegraph):
More than 1,000 care home residents have died of thirst or while suffering severe dehydration over the past decade, The Daily Telegraph can disclose. Elderly and vulnerable patients were left without enough water despite being under the supervision of trained staff in homes in England and Wales…Charities called for an urgent overhaul in social care, saying that the general public would be outraged if animals were treated in the same way…Figures obtained by this newspaper under freedom of information laws found that 1,158 care home residents suffered dehydration-related deaths between 2003 and 2012. Dehydration was named as either the underlying cause of death or a contributory factor, according to analysis of death certificates by the Office of National Statistics. Some 318 care home residents were found to have died from starvation or when severely malnourished, while 2,815 deaths were linked to bed sores. The real figures are likely to be far higher because residents who died while in hospital were not included.
You read that right — these statistics only include the people who literally died in their homes;* they don’t entail those who were rushed to the hospital before succumbing to the effects of gross neglect. Not that British hospital care is particularly stellar either. How many of these patients expired while sitting in ambulances queued up outside overcrowded emergency rooms? Reminder:
UPDATE – Via MBS in the comments, it appears that these figures are based on elderly patients who died in nursing homes, under the supervision of government-trained, ahem, caretakers.
