‘Death By Queue’ Is The Health Crisis Government Asked For

[Kamaji]

‘Death By Queue’ Is The Health Crisis Government Asked For

If we want to shrink wait times and get to see the doctor before it’s too late, get Washington out of health care.

BY: DEANE WALDMAN
MARCH 03, 2023

Mary began to experience abdominal pain, but ignored it for several months. When she finally told me, I said, “I’m your husband, go see your doctor.” She called the doctor’s office and after 40 minutes working her way through the confusing, circular, and interminable phone tree, she got the next available appointment — seven months in the future. When she finally did get in to see her primary care physician, the diagnosis was inoperable pancreatic cancer. Twenty-two months later, my college sweetheart and wife of 54 years died. Might things have been different if she had been seen two years earlier?

Everyone in the world knows of the Covid-19 pandemic. Few have heard about a health crisis that has killed millions with no fanfare at all: death by queue. My wife was likely a victim.

Death by queue is a phrase coined in the United Kingdom, where “queue” describes a line of people waiting for something. Death by queue refers to dying while waiting in line for care that is technically possible but unavailable when needed. Death by queue has long been a feature of the much-vaunted British National Health Service (NHS), which was the model for President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). Recent reports note heart attack victims dying for lack of care-in-time from the NHS and calls for private physicians (those few who remain) to provide timely medical care because NHS (government) physicians cannot.

Americans also experience death by queue. However, since that pandemic is politically unpopular with Washington, the complicit corporate media ignore it.

Prior to Obamacare, average maximum wait time was already unconscionable: 92 days. With ACA expansion of government-provided, no-charge Medicaid insurance, maximum wait times increased to 120 days.

In Illinois over three years, 752 Medicaid enrollees died waiting for desperately needed medical treatment. An internal Veterans Affairs Department audit concluded that “47,000 veterans may have died” waiting in line for care that was technically possible but unavailable. Veterans are covered by government-provided Tricare insurance. 

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Source:  https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/03/death-by-queue-is-the-health-crisis-government-asked-for/