OPINION:
Donald Trump is sadly right about the financial bankruptcy, management chaos and appalling treatment of patients in the British National Health Service (“British officials condemn Trump remarks on U.K. health care,” Web, Feb. 5). The NHS kills thousands every year due to misdiagnosis, delayed detection of cancer and failed operations.
Latest annual figures show the NHS pays out 1.7 billion in compensation. I have three friends who were not diagnosed with cancer quickly enough for treatment to be effective, another whose heart attack was not diagnosed and another who died due to a botched tracheotomy.
Another friend emigrated to Canada, where his wife’s cancer was diagnosed at a late stage (having been missed by the NHS). He brought her home to the U.K., where she could be close to her sons at the end. He found the NHS hospital “filthy and understaffed … we even had to get water for the patients and there were no nurses to give the pain-killers prescribed by the doctors and there were swabs on the floor,” he said.
As my friend said, his wife “paid a very high price for her wish to return” and he will never forgive the British health system.
The trouble in the U.K. is that the NHS has taken on the nature of a state religion where any criticism is a form of blasphemy. So no criticism is allowed and no cure is possible.
RODNEY ATKINSON
Northumberland, United Kingdom
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