Another Victim of "Single-Payer Health Care"

by Liberty and Power

The British National Health Service has claimed another victim. Despite a phone call and note from a doctor stipulating that a critically ill patient, Stewart Fleming, be given immediate care, the staff of Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham, Kent kept him waiting for six hours. By the time they finally got around to treating him, it was too late.

According to Stewart's wife Sarah, when they arrived at the hospital “it was full to bursting. I walked to the front with the letter and told them what the GP had said but I was just told to go to the back of the queue." Representatives of the the National Health Service stated that they were"saddened" by the news but explained that they had particularly long lines this time of year.

Perhaps Mark Brady has an answer. Under the British system does Mr. Fleming's family have any right to sue for malpractice?

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William J. Stepp - 1/2/2009

The man in the story was far from the only victim of the British healthcare monopoly. I don't see why Austrian economics, which relies on a priori reasoning, can't explain the superiority of an as yet unsighted free market medical system to the British or any other system.

Steve Kowalski - 1/2/2009

I think it is fairly obvious from my earlier post that I have no evidence. you can therefore conclude that my lack of doubt derives from a priori reasoning. As for your other point, see Beito's heading.

William J. Stepp - 1/2/2009

My reading of David Beito's post is that he is not drawing any inference from this event, and is inquiring about the legal liability of the authorities. You claim to have "no doubt" of the superiority of a free market medical system. Where is your evidence, and if it is statistical, does it actually imply a causal relationship?

Steve Kowalski - 1/1/2009

I have no doubt that a free market medical system is favorable to a socialized one, but come on, mistakes can happen in even the best system. To try and infer anything useful from a single example is absurd. If you want to make useful inferences from empirical data, you need to compare large scale samples. Since the US system is acknowledged not to be a fully free market one, this cannot be used as one side of the comparison. Perhaps we can find a system somewhere which is genuinely libertarian and start to draw useful conclusions from the evidence. If not, we are left only with a priori reasoning about the matter. But what has been presented here is a single anecdote, merely designed to promote the poster's personal position, without any inferential value.

Mark Brady - 1/1/2009

When I first read this story in another newspaper I assumed he had died that night at the A&E. Then, when I read the story to the end, it became clear that he died twelve days later, on December 27. Although the six-hour delay before the hospital staff saw him was quite inexcusable, it's not clear whether this inordinate delay in seeing him caused his death. Whatever the truth in this case, I'm not persuaded that particular horrific episodes add much in the way of argument for or against single-payer or the present American mish-mash or a genuinely privatized system.

U.K. law could have changed but many years ago the NHS enjoyed some sort of legal immunity (Crown privilege and extending to other government agencies as well). (I think a similar sort of immunity -- although, of course, not monarchical in origin -- applies in other countries, including the U.S.) However, I understand there are legal remedies and I understand that Stewart Fleming's widow is considering these options.