A triumph of government run health care

An absolutely outrageous story on Philadelphia's worst "news" website:

An inspection at a Veterans Affairs nursing home in Philadelphia last year found conditions endangering the welfare of residents, a Pittsburgh newspaper reported Saturday.

Inspectors found dried blood and feeding tubes on the floors, and one patient's leg had to be amputated after maggots were seen falling from his foot, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review said, citing a report obtained through a federal Freedom of Information Act request.

The report by the Wisconsin-based Long Term Care Institute concluded that the facility, the bed count of which has been cut from 240 to 120, “failed to provide a sanitary and safe environment for their residents.” It cites substandard treatment of wound care and “multiple concerns regarding nursing
competencies.”

Here's a little glimpse of the future if the Dems have their way.

The report said no action was taken on one unnamed veteran, even though his toes had turned black, until maggots were observed “falling out of the resident's foot,'' at which point an amputation was ordered. One inspector reported seeing a nurse use the wrong medication despite a week-old order from a physician changing the prescription, the report said.

Some patients had substantial weight loss, including one veteran who lost 51 pounds for unknown reasons.

“The potential for dehydration for these residents presents immediate jeopardy,” the report said.

Just add coma-inducing pain killers and that dehydration simply becomes government-provided end-of-life counseling. After all, in the long run, aren't we all terminal?

The bill would have transformed a legitimate but rarely required pain-control technique known as “palliative sedation” from its legitimate use — putting a patient who is near death, and whose suffering cannot otherwise be controlled, into an induced coma — into a method of intentionally causing death, by, in the words of the bill, “making the patient unaware and unconscious, while artificial food and hydration are withheld, during the progression of the disease leading to the death of the patient.” It would have allowed a dying patient with months left to demand that his doctor sedate and dehydrate him to death — regardless of whether sedation was actually needed to control pain and suffering. And, again quoting the bill, if a doctor didn’t “wish to comply with his or her patient’s choice of end-of-life options,” the doctor would be required to “refer or transfer [the] patient to an alternative health care provider” who would do the deed.

(...)

It’s no coincidence that a similar provision popped up in the notorious Section 1233 of H.R. 3200, the House version of Obamacare. As part of their compensated end-of-life counseling for Medicare recipients, physicians and nurses could refer patients to expert outside groups. And guess which organization claims credit for playing a prominent part in creating Section 1233? From the Compassion & Choices website, on July 27, 2009: “Compassion & Choices and its supporters have worked tirelessly with supportive members of congress [sic] to include in proposed reform legislation a provision requiring Medicare to cover patient consultation with their doctors about end-of-life choice (section 1233 of House Bill 3200).”

FYI, "Compassion and Choices" is the new name of the old Hemlock Society. And they are right in the midst of the healthcare bills floating about congress. How many of these Vets could qualify for "end-of-life counseling" simply as a result of the piss-poor care they recieved at the VA?

This is absolutely criminal--and this is how our government takes care of those who have served it.

Imagine how they will take care of you.