Deadly Drug-Resistant Fungus Sparks Outbreaks In UK (arstechnica.com) 146
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: More than 200 patients in more than 55 UK hospitals were discovered by healthcare workers to be infected or colonized by the multi-drug resistant fungus Candida auris, a globally emerging yeast pathogen that has experts nervous. Three of the hospitals experienced large outbreaks, which as of Monday were all declared officially over by health authorities there. No deaths have been reported since the fungus was first detected in the country in 2013, but 27 affected patients have developed blood infections, which can be life-threatening. And about a quarter of the more than 200 cases were clinical infections. Officials in the UK aimed to assuage fear of the fungus and assure patients that hospitals were safe. "Our enhanced surveillance shows a low risk to patients in healthcare settings. Most cases detected have not shown symptoms or developed an infection as a result of the fungus," Dr Colin Brown, of Public Health England's national infection service, told the BBC.
Yet, public health experts are uneasy about the rapid emergence and level of drug resistance the pathogen is showing. In a surveillance update in July, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that C. auris "presents a serious global health threat." It was first identified in the ear of a patient in Japan in 2009. Since then, it has spread swiftly, showing up in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S., according to the CDC. So far, health officials have reported around 100 infections in nine U.S. states and more than 100 other cases where the fungus was detected but wasn't causing an infection.
Yet, public health experts are uneasy about the rapid emergence and level of drug resistance the pathogen is showing. In a surveillance update in July, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that C. auris "presents a serious global health threat." It was first identified in the ear of a patient in Japan in 2009. Since then, it has spread swiftly, showing up in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S., according to the CDC. So far, health officials have reported around 100 infections in nine U.S. states and more than 100 other cases where the fungus was detected but wasn't causing an infection.
Re: Antibiotics (Score:1)
Re: Antibiotics (Score:5, Informative)
Not a doctor, but there is only a little overlap between antibiotics and antifungal medications. This stuff is resistant to Diflucan (I'm not trying to spell the generic name correctly right now), which is often handed out with much less oversight than antibiotics. Any bio-female could probably get a few doses for a yeast infection without seeing their doctor; calling in and asking is all most require since it is a common ailment.
The problem is that many primary care doctors have been told that C. albicans (the common human strain) can not become resistant. I was told the same, only to be corrected by a very indignant Tropical and Infectious Disease specialist who had seen that first line drug become useless in a few cases.
But this doesn't mean we need to panic and shut down Madagascar. There are other classes of drugs, like the old standby nystatin, and other families of antifungal medications in the larger azole drug category. This should be treatable if caught early. The danger is that drugs like nystatin can not be absorbed so they only treat dermal or gastric infections, while amphotericin B (same class) does kidney damage at the effective dose. So someone who has a systemic infection is going to only have treatments available that cause as much damage as they are trying to prevent. And hospital acquired infections can become systemic very quickly.
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As a long-term athlete's foot patient, I've been under the impression that the anti-fungal drugs haven't worked very well for a very long time...
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Fire still works.
Re: Antibiotics (Score:5, Informative)
Use potassium permanganate. Just buy some of the powder off ebay (whatever size you buy will last the rest of your life). Put a small amount in some warm water. When I say small amount, I mean small. Like the amount that you can get on the end of a house key. You want enough water to cover your feet, and enough potassium permanganate to dye the water a light pink. If it's purple, you used too much. If it's dark, you went way, way too far. Anyway, you can also add some epsom salt to the water. Make sure it's nice and warm, and soak your feet for a half-hour every couple of days until it clears up. Trust me, it will. In order for it to work, you'll need to treat your shoes with boric acid (again, ebay. Get a big bag.). A good dusting is all you need. Also, wash your socks in hot water, and keep your socks on around the house. Bleach your shower and bathroom floor daily. It's all easy stuff. Follow the protocol and your athlete's foot will be gone.
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Use potassium permanganate. Just buy some of the powder off ebay (whatever size you buy will last the rest of your life). Put a small amount in some warm water. When I say small amount, I mean small. Like the amount that you can get on the end of a house key. You want enough water to cover your feet, and enough potassium permanganate to dye the water a light pink. If it's purple, you used too much. If it's dark, you went way, way too far. Anyway, you can also add some epsom salt to the water. Make sure it's nice and warm, and soak your feet for a half-hour every couple of days until it clears up. Trust me, it will. In order for it to work, you'll need to treat your shoes with boric acid (again, ebay. Get a big bag.). A good dusting is all you need. Also, wash your socks in hot water, and keep your socks on around the house. Bleach your shower and bathroom floor daily. It's all easy stuff. Follow the protocol and your athlete's foot will be gone.
This. Potassium permanganate. This was how we treat athlete's foot and most nail fungal infections back in my country of origin. Pretty safe to use when we follow the instructions. Same things with Borax or boric acid, bleach or hydrogen peroxide.
Hell, I suffered all my life of sinus infections till I started doing nasal rinses with a neti pot using a solution containing borax and diluted alkalol. Alkalol helps breaks mucus when/if I have a stuffy nose, but it is borax the thing that has eliminated what
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Just don't mix the potassium permanganate crystals with anything containing glycerin (some liquid soaps do, I think). Potassium permanganate + glycerin => spontaneous combustion.
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Why adding epsom salt to the bath water, though? As a materials scientist, I am baffled by that, seemingly random, addition.
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There's big jugs of bleach in all grocery stores in Canada. What country do you live in that DOES NOT allow you to buy bleach?
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What country do you live in that allows you to buy bleach?
Where the hell do you live?
Re: Antibiotics (Score:5, Insightful)
First, there have been no reported deaths from this infection as per the article, so how exactly is this deadly? Dangerous, potentially deadly? So, please, lets title these articles responsibly. The remainder of this post is not meant to bash the parent, just to define terms and clarify concepts. My opinion is at the end.
Not a doctor, but there is only a little overlap between antibiotics and antifungal medications.
The term antibiotic [merriam-webster.com] covers both anti-bacterial agents (e.g. penicillin) used against bacteria, and anti-fungals (e.g. fluconaole/Diflucan), and technically, they also refer to anti-virals (e.g. aciclovir), but in the most common use, antibiotics refer to antibacterials, and never to antivirals. There are no medications that treat both bacteria (prokaryotes [no nucleus]), fungus (eukaryotes [true nucleus]) simultaneously; yes, bleach [wikipedia.org] (sodium hypochlorite) can destroy both, but internal use is discouraged [and as referenced in the wikipedia article, your body's neutrophils [wikipedia.org] (a type of white blood cell - cells that fight infection) uses hypochlorous acid as an antimicrobial . So.....yes and no. [sorry that kept getting longer and longer]
This stuff is resistant to Diflucan (I'm not trying to spell the generic name correctly right now),
Flu con a zole [medlineplus.gov] - that's not too hard....Talimogene Laherparepvec [pharmacytimes.com]...that's hard. :-)
which is often handed out with much less oversight than antibiotics.
Ummm, no. You can get pretty powerful topical antibiotics and topical antifungals over the counter [nih.gov]. Fluconazole is an oral antifungal that still requires a prescription (at least in the US and other "responsible" countries).
Any bio-female could probably get a few doses for a yeast infection without seeing their doctor; calling in and asking is all most require since it is a common ailment.
It is a common ailment, but it is also a true infection [medscape.com] that can be cultured and proven, and usually requires treatment. (I don't want you to poo-poo this aliment :-), pretty miserably for those afflicted), and unless there is a well established relationship between physician and patient, an exam is required (and strongly encouraged to rule out other more dangerous diagnoses).
The problem is that many primary care doctors have been told that C. albicans (the common human strain) can not become resistant. I was told the same, only to be corrected by a very indignant Tropical and Infectious Disease specialist who had seen that first line drug become useless in a few cases.
I see fluconazole resistant candida albicans frequently (reported 7% resistance rate), but I work at a tertiary care referral center, so YMMV. Never been under the illusion that it could not become resistant. Every organism (meaning microbial species) given enough time and opportunity can become resistant to just about anything.....The only thing that microbial organisms will never become resistant to is fire, well heat anyways (shout out to the the post below).
But this doesn't mean we need to panic and shut down Madagascar. There are other classes of drugs, like the old standby nystatin, and other families of antifungal medications in the larger azole drug category. This should be treatable if caught early. The danger is that drugs like nystatin can not be absorbed so
Re: Antibiotics (Score:2)
Yes, I used antibiotics in the common sense. I did say I'm not a doctor.
Diflucan is saved in my phones autocorrect. Fluconazole wasn't. I couldn't remember the second vowel; my memory is sometimes junk.
I didn't say a C.albicans infection wasn't a true infection. I know it is. I've had it turn into a kidney infection (long story involving caths, neo-bladder surgeries, and congenital defects). I said that they can be handed out without an exam by some doctors. Some offices want a positive swab culture before
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Candida infections are often a sign of some underlying problem. For example, Candida infections are strongly associated with both obesity and diabetes, through multiple mechanisms; there are other common causes. Treating people for Candida without diagnosing and addressing the underlying problem or behavioral issue is irresponsible.
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"Can not", or "has not" (with a silent but implicit "yet, that we know of")?
IANA-medic, but between creationist-bashing and simple interest in the mechanisms of evolution, I'm struggling to think of a chain of logic that could lead to a reasoned claim that "(any human-infecting organism) CAN NOT become resistant to (any treatment, be it chemical, biological)". If you kill off on
Re: Antibiotics (Score:2)
"Can not" is what was repeated to me. I don't recall if it was my GP, one of the nurses, or who.
Why? I have no idea. Maybe they thought it worked like bleach. Maybe the drug reps repeated it so many times that they believed it. Maybe they knew better and were trying to allay my concerns (not knowing I would go over their heads).
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It might be kind of problem, but this specific problem isn't caused by antibiotics being overprescribed. Yeast are eukaryotes, antibiotics don't really work to begin with against them.
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It's a problem that we have fostered a culture of quick fixes and pills for everything. This is a direct result of our attempts to contain in control nature in these ways. Not directly related except through method.
And people wonder where the aliens are! (Score:1)
Hopefully Mulley and Sculder are all over it.
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https://youtu.be/otYalYdywx4 [youtu.be]
This years zika (Score:1)
People will freak out thanks to the internet and media FUD over something they won't get.
I'm waiting for west nile to return. Maybe in 20 years.
Re:This years zika (Score:4, Informative)
I'm waiting for west nile to return. Maybe in 20 years.
Well thats ironic, because people die every year from west nile. 84 in 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Deadly without deaths? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Deadly without deaths? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Deadly without deaths? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a drug resistant variant of a deadly fungus we've seen before. There have been no deaths from this outbreak, but that doesn't change that the fungus is deadly.
At some point in every Ebola outbreak, there are sick people but no deaths. We still know that Ebola is deadly at that time.
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It's a drug resistant variant of a deadly fungus we've seen before. There have been no deaths from this outbreak, but that doesn't change that the fungus is deadly.
Yikes, you mean this [goodreads.com] is actually prescient fiction?
Good book, haven't seen the film.
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C. auris is "deadly" in the same way doctors in a hospital are "deadly": if you are sick and in a hospital, there is a significant chance that they will kill you.
But calling it "deadly" without qualification makes it sound like it's a significant threat to the population at large, and it is not.
Stay out of hospitals and you won't get C. auris.
Re: Deadly without deaths? (Score:1)
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Candida kills 12–24,000 people annually in the United States, officially. Unofficially, the number is almost certainly much higher, because most Candida deaths occur in the elderly and go unreported as "old age" or "natural
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The vast majority of deaths reported in the US are heart disease or cancer. This includes the elderly. Nobody wants to put the real cause of death on a death certificate because of legal liability issues.
Yes. Really.
who should we blame? (Score:5, Funny)
More than 200 patients in more than 55 UK hospitals were discovered by healthcare workers to be infected or colonized by the multi-drug resistant fungus Candida auris,
Should we blame the government, or blame society? Should we blame the images on TV?
No! Blame Candida... blame Candida..
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"No! Blame Candida... blame Candida.."
At least you're candid about it.
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I read "Canada", and I was about to agree!
Just use Garlic (Score:1)
It can clean out dreaded gut infections. Look up best anti-fungal foods on the net.
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You seem to be confusing enteric fungus with exoenteric vampires.
Re: Just use Garlic (Score:3)
I hope they are in charge of spaghetti.
There is good news! (Score:3)
The good news is that we've finally halted global warming! The bad news is that the Earth now hungers for the flesh of man. :-/
Re: There is good news! (Score:1)
Stupid Earth. I'm gonna step on that fucker next time I see 'em.
Why I quit my health club with wet area. (Score:1)
I got a fungus that only a new drug could kill about 8 years ago. Even with the new drug it took over three years to completely kill it.
It just wasn't worth the risk of going to a health club and using their wet areas any more.
Smaller clubs have fewer members, dryer equipment, and are under $15 a month.
But it still worries me how resistant the stuff was.
30-60% death rate?? (Score:1)
Not actually deadly. (Score:2)
Hasn't killed anyone yet.
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In this outbreak. It's killed plenty of people before.
One Word: (Score:3)
HUNGRIES!
All the Gifts... [wikipedia.org]
Old news (Score:2)
Candida blood infection (Score:2)
Re:Health vs infection (Score:4, Informative)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
The National Institutes of Health
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Plus all of the different insurance companies, hospitals, etc etc etc
Re: (Score:3)
A fine effort to instantly derail the thread.
Here in the UK we've had quite enough of that already. [bbc.co.uk]
Re: Health vs infection (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Health vs infection (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. is the best health care in the world ...for about the richest 2% of the population.
For the rest of us, it's so bad that we have shorter adult lifespans and higher infant mortality rates.
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The idea that differences in life expectancy are mostly due to large differences in the quality of medical are are not supported by data. In fact, they are largely determined by public health issues and lifestyle choices: obesity, tobacco, alcohol, sedentary lifestyle, lack of exercise, drug addiction, communicable diseases, national origin, STDs, single parenthood, stressful jobs, driving, guns, etc.
Furth
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The screeching liberals tend to forget about the socialized medicine systems we already have in place. People that are genuinely bad off in the US get free health care.
The only real issue is whether or not able bodied, young, working people that can fed for themselves get something for nothing.
That's what American liberals are really screeching for. They want government benefits and don't want to contribute to the collective price for them. THAT is the real difference between the US and Europe.
Our liberals
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Or perhaps they are just more selfless than you? Maybe what you are doing is what's called projection - 'I'm a selfish bastard therefore everyone else has selfish motives too'.
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Anonymous coward wrote:
"I just want reasonable health care costs. The US spends 17% of GDP on health care, which is more than nations with socialized health care pay. We are paying enough that everyone should get health care, but our in system a lot of that money goes to administration, profit margins, etc. A single-payer system is superior."
If someone wants to mod them up.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Try living in Sweden. I have 30km to the closes "first aid hut" and If I try to see a doctor I am given a time and when I show up I am told to f*ck off and try again later.
Have ya considered moving back to civilization?
In the USA, we don't have hospitals out in the wilderness either.
One great plus about "repeal and replace" - the Medicaid cuts would close many smaller hospitals serving smaller communities. Those who voted for the republicans just don't realize yet that they'd voted for the deaths of family members.
Re: Health vs infection (Score:2)
I don't use those dirty communist measurements, but I live in America. It's further than that, ~24 miles, just to a town. A hospital is a 1.25 hour journey, in good weather. The VA is about 2 hours away.
To be clear, I live here by choice.
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None of that is true. Sorry about that - I suffer from mental health problems and am a compulsive liar. My therapist has told me I have to come clean when I catch myself lying. I'm actually from Springfield, New Jersey and live in my mom's basement.
I hope you can all forgive me.
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The alternative in the US is you die or go bankrupt.
I'm confident that no one in the US has died or gone bankrupt because they were on vacation when their blood pressure appointment rolled around.
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In 1981, 8 percent of bankruptcy filing were for medical reasons.
By 2009, just before the ACA was passed, 62.1% percent of bankruptcy filing were for medical reasons. (American Journal of Medicine)
Medical bankruptcy appears to be back down to 30% as of 2016. If the ACA is repealed, that's expected to quickly return to and then exceed 60% levels again. Additionally, under the House plan 27,000 more americans would die per year each year going forward for the next 10 years. Under the Senate plan only 22,0
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Interesting statistics. Also interesting that in Canada, with it's highly socialized health care system, the rate of medical bankruptcy is half of America's under the ACA. Why isn't it almost zero? Oh, that's because in both cases, loss of income due to illness is part of medical bankruptcy statistics. In other words, if you break your leg the medical costs won't bankrupt you, but staying home from work for a couple of months just might. Guess they need AFLAC.
At any rate, I'm still confident confident that
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I don't know... 120 million adults, 120 million seniors.
If the odds are 1:1,000,000 it happens roughly twice a year.
If the odds are 1:10,000,000 it happens roughly twice a decade.
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Nice theory, but utterly wrong. The US has a huge public healthcare system (socialized medicine) that spends more per American citizen than many European countries or New Zealand. So, if your theory was true, the US government could simply extend that public healthcare system to the entire population, just like in Europe, without changing anythin
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The same outcome? I don't have to wait for diagnostic services as an American. I have never felt the need to go to the private market in order to get a CAT scan in a timely fashion.
Your claim of "millions denied access" is just bogus media narrative.
Basic medical care is no more expensive than what Americans blow on pets, beauty treatments, and over priced lattes.
Besides, Obamacare was supposed to solve that whole "access" problem.
Re: And with the UK's very limited health care.. (Score:2)
Pretty much. Don't do CPR on me. Don't do any heroics. Don't keep me alive if I'm brain dead. Just drug my ass and let me die. I can afford that stuff, but death doesn't scare me. Being unable to enjoy life scares me, but not death.
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Yes. In the US you get to make that choice. It's not made for you.
I really can't imagine what kind of mindset you need to have to consider anything less as acceptable. Is life really seen as so cheap in Europe that it's acceptable to give up on people?
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I don't know? Let's try changing that? Is life so valuable that it's worth any expense and/or hardship - even if that hardship is borne by other people who are paying for your care?
In my view, no. Death is the ultimate outcome of life. We all get older, sick, and die. Accepting it seems to be better - for me - than trying to oppose the only possible outcome of life.
For the record, I think we should have single-payer health care. What that should look like is up for debate, but I'm pretty sure it's less expe
Re: And with the UK's very limited health care... (Score:4, Funny)
My wife that was a nurse in the UK for 13 years said that in the UK, they would have just let me die.
You can't blame your marital problems on the NHS.
Re: And with the UK's very limited health care... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was in a motorcycle accident and no one asked for insurance info until after my third surgery. Too many people overstate how bad the US has if wrt medical care.
Try having an illness instead. See how that works out.
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> Try having an illness instead. See how that works out.
So you've got some actual experience with this or are you just some moron repeating something he heard from CNN or The Other 98%?
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I was in a motorcycle accident and no one asked for insurance info until after my third surgery.
Perhaps they were more concerned about keeping you alive - and so your insurance info would matter.
Hospital Emergency Rooms in the US are required by law to treat everyone regardless of insurance / ability to pay. Not so much in the other areas of the healthcare industry.
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I was in a motorcycle accident and no one asked for insurance info...
This is where my story would have ended in my country. No "until" qualifier required.
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> Not Venezuela, but many other places. I had excellent OPLL surgery on my neck for about $14,000, including four nights in a private hospital room. In the US it would have been (I'm told) close to a quarter million.
Except you wouldn't have actually paid that.
Your medical tourism requires a big bag of money.
Getting treated in the US doesn't.
If you've got the big bag of money to engage in medical tourism, or even just regular foreign tourism, then you're clearly not in a position to be forced to pay cash
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That's what's wrong with (many of) you Americans. You see a dictatorial regime. It so happens to misuse socialist ideology in its oppression and you immediately use that country as a benchmark for 'the socialist state'. It's disgusting! The U.S. of A. Proudly ruining a fourth generation with the notion of capitalist supremacy.
You can mod me into oblivion now, I just had to blow off some steam...
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No. We distrust central authority in general.
That's the problem with the current liberal narrative about Confederate monuments or even the Electoral College. It glosses over a lot of the relevant history and background material.
The EU doesn't have a single continent wide medical system but the US is expected to magically build an effective one. That's deranged.
The "shining examples" that tend to get held up in Europe are the size of American cities. They aren't even as large as most of our States. The close
Re: And with the UK's very limited health care... (Score:4, Insightful)
That comment and the parent are complete lies and such obvious lies I'm surprised anyone went with it.
In the NHS you get care for as long as you need it, free of charge if you're a UK citizen*. It almost certainly will cost a lot less than in the US largely because the NHS is more efficient than a million doctors, hospitals, insurers and drug companies all spending on advertising and sending bills to each other and all extracting profits from the patients.
It's not all great. Because recent governments have introduced the private sector into the NHS, the kind of shortcuts (do the minimum the contract requires - charge fees for everything else), incompetence (get rid of lots of staff, specially the more experienced, hire some new cheap not-as-good ones) and fiddles (no-one ever checks so we'll make up the figures) which grow when profits are the main motive are creeping in there too.
* For those not poor, old or chronically ill, prescription medicines are £8.60 and dentistry costs a maximum of £244.30.
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Correct. But "as long as you need it" is not sufficient for US voters: US voters want treatment "as long as they want it and as they want it". There is a big difference. US patients often want heroic end-of-life treatments and the latest technology and gadgets, none of which is actually needed. Furthermore, the UK has a significant private healthcare sector, which provide higher quality services to those who want them
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...subject to rationing and waiting lists.
You may need some life saving surgery and you might eventually even get it. You will have to wait for it though. You may even die in the meantime.
You can see people on protest sites appealing the meds they've been denied or see people raising private money to pay for their own NHS operations on GoFundMe. Or you could simply read the British press for plenty of reasons to rubbish the NHS.
None of this stuff is secret or hidden.
The liberal press in Britain will happily
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I don't think that anyone ever said that there weren't better options than the NHS for someone in the financial position to pay for multiple trans-atlantic plane tickets and spur-of-the-moment relocation costs, rather than ask for a second opinion.
There is a point where treating any disease is no longer in the best interests of the patient - it's unethical to do so. Sounds like your Gran was misdiagnosed into that category - that happens under any system, regardless of cost. I'm glad you were able to help h
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The one good thing, nay, GREAT thing about NHS is that only the strong survive, and so the gene pool doesn't fade like it does in the US and other countries with the will and the means to spend 15% of their GDP on medical care.
Don't worry, the inefficiency of US healthcare more than makes up for the amount spent on it.