Having government-provided health insurance doesn’t do a lot of good when the health care is delivered by apathetic, uncaring, unionized, government health workers.

Consider this story (July 5, 2009) in the UK’s Telegraph newspaper:

Cancer patient Pamela Goddard battled against cancer for 50 years before she died of an infected bedsore during a stay in hospital.

…

The cancer did not kill her, but a bedsore did.

What appeared to be the start of one was noted on her back as she was admitted for radiation treatment in September and it was allowed to gradually develop into a “raging sore” which left Mrs Goddard moaning in pain.

During four weeks of what her family describe as “torture” in a bed in East Surrey Hospital, the sore resulted in a fatal blood infection and she died on October 27.

Her son Adrian Goddard, who lives in the US, said: “She survived cancer for 40 years, then died from a bedsore.

“It is just beyond belief that they could let a bedsore develop to the point where it actually kills someone from septicaemia.”He said the nurses seemed largely unconcerned by the growing size of the sore and his mother’s increasing pain.”

The bedsore was painful. There were various procedures that should have been done. You are supposed to debride the thing, clean it, treat it.”

She was supposed to be lifted and moved so there’s not constant pressure on it,” Mr Goddard said.”There were explanations like ‘there was only one nurse and it wasn’t possible to do it or the equipment was broken’… just a series of excuses.

Of course, the Obama administration denies that UK socialist-style health care cost containment is on the horizon. They prefer the approach of having government pay for health care while hospitals and doctors remain nominally private. However, the Obama approach is like that taken in Canada where stories of hospital neglect – just like in the UK – are reported with great regularity.