Another Victim of “Single-Payer Health Care”

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.

David Beito is a Research Fellow at The Independent Institute and editor of the Independent book, The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civil Society (with Peter Gordon and Alexander Tabarrok).
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