The structures of medical propaganda are cracking.
The Washington Post (
"Researchers: Medical errors now third leading cause of death in United States," May 3) reports on a new Johns Hopkins study. I'll give you the Post's explosive quotes and then analyze them.
"...a new study by patient safety researchers provides some context...Their analysis, published in the BMJ on Tuesday [
'Medical error-the third leading cause of death in the US,'
03 May 2016], shows that 'medical errors' in hospitals and other health
care facilities are incredibly common and may now be the third leading
cause of death in the United States -- claiming 251,000 lives every
year, more than respiratory disease, accidents, stroke and Alzheimer's."
"Martin Makary, a professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine who led the research, said in an interview that the
category includes everything from bad doctors to more systemic issues
such as communication breakdowns when patients are handed off from one
department to another."
"'It boils down to people dying from the care that they receive rather
than the disease for which they are seeking care,'" Makary said.
"His calculation of 251,000 deaths [per year] equates to nearly 700
deaths a day -- about 9.5 percent of all deaths annually in the United
States."
"Moreover, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention doesn't
require reporting of [medical] errors in the data it collects about
deaths through billing codes, making it hard to see what's going on at
the national level."
"Frederick van Pelt, a doctor who works for The Chartis Group, a health
care consultancy, said another element of harm that is often overlooked
is the number of severe patient injuries resulting from medical error."
"'Some estimates would put this number at 40 times the death rate,' van Pelt said."
There you have it. Now let's dig in.
First of all, this study, as you can see, is focusing on medical errors
in hospitals and "other health care facilities." Did the researchers do
much work looking for fatal errors that occur in average doctors'
offices? If not, the death numbers mentioned in this study are on the
low side.
The CDC, which regularly reports mortality figures, doesn't receive
data, nor does it require data, from doctors on errors which lead to
patients' deaths. So the CDC is completely in the dark on the third
leading cause of death in the US. This, of course, is the same agency
that assures the public that vaccines are wonderfully safe and
effective.
Consider the final quotes above. The estimate that "severe patient
injuries from medical errors" are 40 times the death figure would give
us this: every year in the US, there are 10 million severe injuries as a
result of medical errors.
For years, I've been hammering on another landmark study out of John
Hopkins. It was published on July 26, 2000, in the Journal of the
American Association:
"Is US health really the best in the world?" The author was Dr. Barbara Starfield, a revered public health expert.
Starfield, in her study, separated deaths from errors/mistreatment in hospitals, and deaths from medical drugs:
* Yearly deaths from mistreatment and errors in hospitals: 119,000.
* Yearly deaths from correctly prescribed medical drugs: 106,000.
The new study doesn't specifically give a death-number for the medical-drug category.
So again, we can assume the new study is citing an overall death figure that is on the low side.
So let's just round off the new 250,000-death figure and call it 300,000
deaths in America per year as a direct result of the medical system.
That works out to 3 MILLION deaths per decade.
And 100 MILLION severe patient injuries per decade.
This is the altruistic umbrella under which more Americans than ever
will live and die, as a result of the glorious Obamacare insurance
program.
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