http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…

Grossly overweight children may be taken from their families and put into care if Britain’s obesity epidemic continues to escalate, council chiefs said yesterday.

The Local Government Association argued that parents who allowed their children to eat too much could be as guilty of neglect as those who did not feed their children at all.

The association said that until now there had been only a few cases when social services had intervened in obesity cases. But it gave warning that local councils may have to take action much more often and, if necessary, put obese children on “at risk” registers or take them into care. It called for new guidelines to be drawn up to help authorities deal with the issue.

“Councils are increasingly having to consider taking action where parents are putting children’s health in real danger,” he said. “As the obesity epidemic grows, these tricky cases will keep on cropping up. Councils would step in to deal with an undernourished and neglected child, so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different? If parents consistently place their children at risk through bad diet and lack of exercise, is it right that a council should step in to keep the child’s health under review?”

“The nation’s expanding waistline threatens to have a devastating impact on our public services. It’s a huge issue for public health, but it also risks placing an unprecedented amount of pressure on council services.”

Deadly facts

— Councils are spending tens of thousands of pounds widening crematorium furnaces to deal with fatter corpses

— Standard coffins are between 16 and 20ins wide (40-50cm) but coffins twice that size are being ordered to fit larger bodies

— Lewisham Council has ordered a 44in cremator from America and is taking coffins from the Midlands. A furnace has just been installed at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, for coffins a metre wide and Blackburn is to buy a 42in cremator

— New ambulances have been introduced across Wales with special equipment for fat patients, including a winch and an extra wide strengthened stretcher

— Fire services are threatening to charge police or hospitals a fee if they are called in to move grossly overweight people out of dangerous buildings

— Many schools are having to adapt their furniture to cope with heavier, wider children. Each larger table and chair costs about £30

— It is estimated that nearly 2,000 people are too fat to work

Another problem associated with socialism. One person’s problem is socialized and then everyone believes they have a say in your life. Isn’t that counter to what universal health care was advertised as? Everyone has care regardless of status or condition? You’d now be free from the worry of obtaining care. The problem is when you remove the incentive to take care of yourself you’re more likely to be worse off. The cost of not caring for oneself is spread out over the populous.

Karen DeCoster over at LewRockwell.com/blog made a good point: “I thought that the Department of Health banned the use of the word “obese” when referencing children?” Perhaps the local authorities haven’t gotten the memo yet.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…

The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves.

One drug for kidney cancer, routinely available through public health systems in most European countries but not to British patients, can reduce the size of tumours in 31% of patients, compared with just 6% of those prescribed the standard NHS drug.

The growing row over “co-payments” has prompted the government to reconsider the ban. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has promised a “fundamental rethink” of the policy.

Research presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology found that kidney patients taking the new drug Sutent lived six months longer than those prescribed alpha interferon, the NHS treatment.

The failure of the NHS to make more effective drugs available to cancer patients has been condemned as “unethical” by leading doctors.

A woman with bowel cancer is fighting for the right to pay for a drug that could extend her life long enough for her to spend Christmas with her grandchildren.

Sheila Norrington, 59, a former NHS medical secretary from Maidstone, Kent, has been told by doctors that if she buys the drug Erbitux, which the health service will not pay for, she will lose her state-funded cancer care. Erbitux is the only drug capable of treating her advanced bowel cancer.

Norrington’s husband, Goff, 61, a former sales manager, said: “We have been told that if we pay for it ourselves we will be thrown off the NHS completely and we will need to pay for everything privately. We are devastated. This is not going to cure my wife, but if it keeps her alive a little bit longer, then we would pay for it.”

The couple say that although they could pay for a few cycles of the drug, which costs about £3,000 a month, they could not pay for all Norrington’s care, including scans, blood tests and consultations.

Goff Norrington added: “We have two young granddaughters and this could make the difference between sitting round the table with them at Christmas or not. We think it is deplorable that patients can get this drug almost anywhere in Europe but we cannot get it in the UK.”

A spokesman for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said: “We are governed by Department of Health policy on this issue.”

A poll for The Sunday Times shows strong support for allowing co-payment in the National Health Service, with 89% saying that people who buy additional cancer drugs should continue to get free NHS treatment.

Only 5% think allowing co-payment would create a two-tier NHS. Until now this has been the position taken by Alan Johnson, the health secretary.

Ministers had feared that allowing co-payment would upset less well-off patients, but the YouGov poll of nearly 1,800 people shows strong backing across the social spectrum and supporters of all three main parties.

Lee over at MooreWatch.com I think said it all: “This, of course, begs the question.  If compassionate free government healthcare can’t provide, y’know, actual healthcare to patients, and they are forced to paying massive amounts of money to buy their own treatments, maybe the solution to the problem is less free government healthcare and more private sector solutions.”

When will these people realize that the government can not negate scarcity? The only thing that can bring more and better healthcare to the masses is an increase in their wealth and the only way to do that is capital accumulation through free market capitalism.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…

Millions of people with arthritis, asthma and even heart failure will be urged to treat themselves as part of a Government plan to save billions of pounds from the NHS budget.

Instead of going to hospital or consulting a doctor, patients will be encouraged to carry out “self care” as the Department of Health (DoH) tries to meet Treasury targets to curb spending.

The guidelines could mean people with chronic conditions:

• Monitoring their own heart activity, blood pressure and lung capacity using equipment installed in the home
• Reporting medical information to doctors remotely by telephone or computer
• Administering their own drugs and other treatment to “manage pain” and assessing the significance of changes in their condition
• Using relaxation techniques to relieve stress and avoid “panic” visits to emergency wards.

The Prime Minister claimed the self-care agenda was about increasing patient choice and “personalised” services.

But an internal Government document seen by The Daily Telegraph makes clear that the policy is a money-saving measure, a key plank of DoH plans to cut costs.

So taking away personal responsibility, ignoring scarcity and giving out something for “free” leads to abuse? Who would have thought? At first I had thought this would be simply a story about the later two but I forgot just how inefficient government can be. They were requiring people to come into the office just to report particular information or check blood pressure? These things are easy to do why would you have mandated that in the first place? From what I’ve read places like the UK with its NHS usually have emergency rooms filled with random people with no serious conditions. Panic attacks are not generally serious nor should the behavior be encouraged by allowing any person the ability to walk into the ER and be treated for the smallest thing. These cost savings messures seem pretty obvious to me… it’d just be nice if the British government didn’t try to spin the issue.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/…

A government advisor has suggested that the problem of Brits continuing to smoke themselves to death might be tackled by requiring nicotine addicts to obtain a £200 annual licence, the Telegraph reports.

Professor Julian le Grand, a “former advisor to Tony Blair” who is a lecturer in social policy at the London School of Economics and “advises ministers through his chairmanship of Health England”, made his proposal this week as a Department of Health report said that while “smoking prevalence is falling among both males and females”, far too many of us are popping our clogs as a result of coronary disease and other smoking-related ailments.

Accordingly, and since simply raising the price of gaspers has not in the past convinced hardened smokers to quit, le Grand declared that “requiring them to fill in forms, and have photographs taken in order to apply for a permit would prove a more effective deterrent”.

The master plan is to issue an initial yearly fag permit, and once up and running, the scheme could be “extended so smokers had to get a doctor’s signature that their health was not at ‘massive risk’ by smoking in order to get a licence”.

They have no shame. They make no attempt to hide their nanny state push. I kindof want this to gain traction and be implemented. Soon they’ll be stopping people on the street asking for their smoking papers. Afterwards they can put high taxes on fatty foods. When people don’t stop eating unhealthy food the government can then introduce a license. You’ll be given fatty credits when you register the healthy foods you eat and how much you’ve exercised. With a note from your NHS doctor of course. Later if they suspect that your eating habits have lead to some problem NHS will be sure to place you at the end of the line. Why should the government and therefore the people have to pay for your bad habits?