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Flaw In Emergency Response System May Have Killed Hundreds
Hugh Pickens writes "The Telegraph reports that a flaw in the way emergency response software was set up to handle Category A responses in Great Britain may have cost hundreds of lives over the past ten years. Most ambulance services use an international computerized system designed in America and in the US version, a fall of more than 6 feet receives the maximum priority response. However, the government committee which governs its use in Great Britain decided that such cases should be deemed less urgent, and excluded from an eight minute category A target response time. If a call involved a fall of more than 6 feet it was designated a lower priority 'category B response' despite the presence of life-threatening conditions which were supposed to receive the most urgent category A response. The flaw came to light after Bonnie Mason, 58, fell 12 feet down the stairs and died from a head injury after emergency controllers in Suffolk failed to identify her situation as 'life-threatening.'"
Shouldn't the 911 operator taking the call be well trained enough to know what's life threatening and whats not?
Um, no. As a wise man once said,
Yeah BOYYYYYYEEEEE!
People need to realize that there is a corporate executive who often stands between a patient and his or her doctor. That’s the reality. And I think the insurance industry is now fear-mongering during this debate on health care reform, saying that a government bureaucrat could stand between someone and his or her doctor. But the current situation is just as bad, if not worse, because you have people doing that now who are denying care to meet Wall Street’s expectations.
Wendell Potter is former head of corporate communications for Cigna Corporation, where he worked for 15 years. He is now a fellow at the Center for Media and Democracy.
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=33655d70ff9cd7509f16bfd2bfbafa9f
Politicians on Capitol Hill have no trouble with committees that decide the fate of American lives. What they have a problem with is losing corporate donors. Private medical insurance agencies have a lot of lobbyists on the payroll.
Truthfully, the availability of a public option will ultimately save taxpayers money. We already foot the bill with higher hospital expenses and taxes when the poor have to wait until the last minute to receive care. When there's a public clinic that requires virtually no money to visit, people will get more effective and less expensive care earlier. Many of America's lower middle class will then opt out of the ridiculously expensive plans, so they can send their kids to college, or move to a safer neighborhood, or whatever. This will cut into the bottom line of insurance corporations, which is why they are fighting it so bitterly.
And the rich won't see anything change. They'll always pay for private "cadillac" plans, just like they do in Germany and England. They just don't want to lose profits in the insurance companies that they own, or - God forbid - have to pay the same tax rates that they did ten or fifteen years ago.