"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Sunday, May 25, 2008

NHS CUTS CARE AND DECREASES QUALITY - AGAIN

TELEGRAPH: NHS hospitals lose 32,000 beds in a decade
More than 30,000 hospital beds have been lost since Labour came to power, with record cuts in NHS wards last year.

The Department of Health claims bed numbers have fallen because hospitals are more efficient, with patients staying for shorter periods

The cutbacks mean increasing numbers of hospitals are going on "black alert" – which involves closing their doors to new patients because they are full.

Patients' groups described the loss of the beds, at a time when overcrowded wards have seen soaring rates of killer infections, as "a national scandal".

The reduction contradicts a pledge from Tony Blair at the turn of the century that there would be 7,000 more NHS beds by 2010. New figures, seen by The Telegraph, show that the number of health service beds fell more than 8,000 last year, as the NHS began a reorganisation process which will mean the closure of dozens of hospitals.

More than 40 per cent of maternity units turned away women in labour last year because they had no room.

Meanwhile, ambulances have been forced to queue outside overstretched hospitals, treating patients in car parks just yards from accident and emergency departments. The new statistics, revealed in response to a parliamentary question by Ed Vaizey, the Conservative MP, show that almost 32,000 NHS hospital beds went between 1997, when Labour took office, and 2007.
Tax-payer financed "universal" care sucks.
Yet this is what the Democrats want to do to our system
It would make healthcare in the USA worse.

VOTE ACCORDINGLY.

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