Socialized medicine at work in Britain

More than 33,000 people died needlessly over ten years because of poor care after a heart attack, a major study has found.

Nine out of ten patients do not receive the correct treatment after an attack, it revealed. Shockingly, the researchers warned that the true number of needless deaths could be twice as high as their estimate.

Doctors last night said the findings were ‘unacceptable’ and needed urgent attention across the NHS.

The failure to stick to international treatment guidelines contributes to a quarter of heart attack deaths in England and Wales, which experts say could be easily avoided.

The researchers estimate that one patient dies needlessly every month in every hospital in England and Wales because of poor care – including failing to give patients certain drugs and not ordering crucial scans.

Someone suffers a heart attack every three minutes in the UK, with nearly 200 people of working age dying every week. Treatment has improved rapidly in recent years, with the development of 24/7 acute cardiac units meaning patients are fast-tracked to expert teams.

But the new study reveals the treatment of patients after an attack is falling woefully short.

The researchers analysed 390,000 cases of the most common type of heart attack – called a non-ST elevation heart attack or NSTEMI – in 247 hospitals in England and Wales between 2003 and 2013.

For each case they checked whether the patient had been given 13 treatments – including scans, drugs and medical advice – recommended in international guidelines. They found that in 87 per cent of cases, patients did not receive at least one of the interventions.

Doctors often failed to give patients anti-cholesterol statin drugs or anti-clotting drugs, which are proven to drastically reduce the risk of a repeat attack.

They missed out crucial scans, which can pick up further hidden problems, and they neglected to advise patients about the best way to change their lifestyle, including how to improve their diet and stop smoking.

The researchers from the University of Leeds and University College London wrote in the European Heart Journal: ‘We found that if all patients during the study period had received the investigations and treatments for which they were eligible... around 33,000 deaths may have been prevented.

‘This equates to over a quarter of all NSTEMI deaths, or about one avoidable death per month per hospital over the last decade.’

The team used data from the Myocardial Ischaemia National Audit Project (MINAP) and said: ‘We speculate that MINAP captures less than half of all NSTEMI in England and Wales. Consequently, the number of preventable deaths that we report will be underestimated.’

They concluded: ‘We clearly show that, across a modern healthcare system such as in the UK, there are substantial opportunities to improve outcomes through relatively simple measures.’

Study leader Dr Chris Gale, of the Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine, said: ‘What we’ve highlighted here is the unacceptable deficit in the care being given to people after they’ve had an NSTEMI heart attack.

‘The good news is that now we’ve identified the problem, we can certainly fix it. Simple interventions, such as prescribing statins, are being missed and this is resulting in loss of life.’

Professor Peter Weissberg, of the British Heart Foundation, which funded the research, said: ‘This study shows that many people in the UK are receiving sub-optimal care after a heart attack and that lives are being lost as a consequence. Hospitals need to apply the lessons learnt from this research.’

Professor Huon Gray, NHS England’s national clinical director for heart disease, said: ‘Immediate and long-term survival rates after a heart attack are improving thanks to advances in treatment and aftercare, but this study shows there are opportunities to improve outcomes further.’

He added: ‘National and international guidelines are clear, and these findings should act as a reminder to providers and commissioners of care that best practice should always be followed.’

SOURCE

********************************

Why Trump Resonates

While there is considerable and expected animus directed at presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump from the Left, there might be as much, if not more, invective coming from the Right. Columnist George Will is infuriated by the extensive damage Trump has inflicted on the GOP, warning that the collaborationists who support him “will render themselves ineligible to participate in the party’s reconstruction.” Charles Krauthammer also speaks to the “ideological realignment” of the party. They are two members of a conservative army appalled by Trump’s rise among a voter base they believe has allowed anger to overcome ideology. Yet their angst is largely based on the conventional wisdom regarding the ostensible differences between conservative vs. liberal, or Democrat vs. Republican. What if the conventional wisdom no longer applies?

“Any true understanding of this election requires an appreciation of the one huge political fault line that is driving America into a period of serious political tremors, certain to jolt the political Richter scale,” writes a very insightful Robert W. Merry. “It is nationalists vs. globalists.”

Merry goes on to explain how the globalists “captured” American society by taking over elitist institutions that included the media, academia, big corporations, big finance, Hollywood, think tanks, NGOs, and charitable foundations. In the process of doing so, the elites who ran these institutions began to believe they were the ultimate arbiters of proper thinking. In turn, Merry explains that worldview led to a “quantum expansion of social and political arrogance on the part of these high-flyers.”

Enter Trump, who galvanized an American public furious with the elitist idea that national sovereignty has outlived its usefulness in a rapidly “shrinking” world.

Nowhere have the elites made this plainer than their failure to enforce immigration law. America is on the verge of yet another surge at our southern border. Through the first six months of FY2016, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported a 78% increase from the 15,616 illegals apprehended last year, and only slightly less than the record-setting surge of illegals apprehended in 2014. Illegals the Obama administration purposely dispersed throughout the nation to await immigration hearings, even as the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review remains fully aware that between between July 2014 and January 2016, a whopping 88% of removal orders were issued “in absentia,” because illegals failed to show up for those hearings.

No matter how loud the public clamors for border control and a crackdown on visa overstays (less than 1% of visa overstayers were deported in 2015), Rule of Law is routinely ignored. Moreover, globalists are not content to allow America to wither from de facto invasion. They also insist legal immigration must be ramped up to accommodate their employment needs, even though many of those who demand such accommodation have been laying off American workers and replacing them with foreign counterparts willing to work for lower wages. This, despite the reality that wages have already been stagnant for decades.

On foreign policy, Merry explains that globalists are animated by humanitarian impulses where the “rights and well-being of the world’s people supersede the rights and well-being of the American populace.” Trump-supporting nationalists want America to remain strong, and any military intervention to be based national security interests only.

Yet discontent with foreign policy pales in comparison to the animus driven by free trade. Rightly or wrongly (a lot wrongly) many Americans who flock to Trump are convinced free trade has hollowed out the nation’s industrial base. And while the protectionist impulses of these Americans are economically problematic, they are driven by two factors. First, there are towns and cities in America that have been decimated by globalization, and no amount of talk about the overall benefits to the nation will resonate with those directly harmed.

Yet the most important element of Trump’s appeal has nothing to do with political ideology at all. The Donald has taken a wrecking ball to the elite-driven political correctness that routinely ridicules and marginalizes ordinary Americans. And despite his multitudinous faults and foibles, Trump embodies the one thing most Republican politicians avoid like Ebola: a take-no-prisoners willingness to employ the very same street-fighter tactics Democrats and their media allies have successfully used for decades.

Krauthammer, et al, rightly rue the loss of dignity Trump represents. But a conservative electorate tired of milquetoast, GOP politicians willing to lose — as long as they do it nobly? Not so much. Thus they gravitate to a so-called Alpha Male they perceive as willing to defend American interests above all.

By contrast, Merry writes that Hillary Clinton “is the personification of the globalist elite … totally in sync with the underlying sensibilities of political correctness, a practitioner of identity politics, which lies at the heart of the assault on the national heritage.” He notes that nothing reflects this better than “the Clinton Foundation, a brilliant program to chase masses of money from across borders to fund the underpinnings of an ongoing political machine.”

Thus, be it by accident or design, Trump may signify the emergence of a new paradigm. “Make America Great Again” is hardly a cutting edge slogan (he “borrowed” it from Ronald Reagan), but it certainly resonates among millions of Americans who see Trump as their last chance to preserve national sovereignty, even if that preservation requires a level of ideological compromise that gives GOP/conservative gatekeepers fits. The very same gatekeepers who whine about the demise of conservatism and the GOP, while they apparently fail to see the steady march towards globalism will lead to the virtual extinction of both.

For those who still believe in the nation-state, Trump may prove ultimately disappointing. Clinton already has. But she and her globalist allies — as well as many disappointed conservative scolds — may be surprised when they discover that in 2016, millions of Americans' political ideology can be reduced to five words: I want my country back.

SOURCE

******************************

Trump Celebrity Endorsement Nobody Was Expecting

Rapper Azaelia Banks, who recently engaged with a vicious war of words on social media with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, has announced she's supporting Donald Trump:

The outspoken rapper says Hillary “talks to black people as if we’re children or pets.”

The singer defended her support for the “asshole” GOP candidate and said of Hillary Clinton: She “talks to black people as if we’re children or pets.”

Donald Trump can add another member of Hollywood to his list of supporters.

On Saturday afternoon, singer Azealia Banks expressed her support for the GOP candidate in a spree of tweets, kicking off the conversation with, “I REALLY want Donald Trump to win the election.”

She told her Twitter followers that her predictions about the presidential race were true: “I told you guys Bernie Sanders didn’t have the clout. i told you all he wasn’t going to be the nominee.”

In her series of tweets, Banks defended Trump and his outspoken opinions. “Trump is an asshole but he’s not been groomed and programmed on some mkultra tip to DO & SAY what the establishment wants him to,” she began and added, “Trump just wants the U.S to be lavish … for all of us. I can f— with that.”
Key for Hillary is maintaining the illusion that she cares about black people. If Trump can peel away African American support from the presumptive Democratic nominee, she's toast.

SOURCE

***************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

***************************

For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or  here -- for when blogspot is "down" or failing to  update.  Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

*********************************