The Death Pathway

Top Democrat strategist and donor Steven Rattner, who served as Obama’s lead auto-industry advisor, wrote: “We need death panels…. Well, maybe not...exactly” (NY Times 9/16/12, http://tinyurl.com/d6ur78a). The British National Health Service has something even better: the Liverpool “Care” Pathway.

The LCP involves withdrawing nutrition and hydration from patients believed to be near the end of life. At many hospitals, more than half the patients who died were on the LCP, and at least £12.4 million has been paid to trusts for hitting targets in its use (http://tinyurl.com/dx2n2ra). Half the patients on the LCP, about 57,000 per year, are never told (http://tinyurl.com/cu4mfwa). It is now being used on sick babies, who may take 10 days to shrivel up and die (http://tinyurl.com/d4vdumc).

Inadvertent Deaths in NHS

Patients having major surgery are four times more likely to die in a British than in an American hospital; seriously ill patients are seven times more likely to die, owing largely to a shortage of specialists and lack of intensive care beds (Townhall.com 10/21/12).

Even without the LCP, 43 patients starved to death, and 111 died of thirst on NHS hospital wards last year, according to the Office of National Statistics. Spot checks by NHS regulators found that half of 100 hospitals were failing basic standards on treating the elderly with dignity and seeing that they were properly fed (http://tinyurl.com/8hq4y2b).