At the beginning of the 20th century Britain’s health was in a sorry state. Life expectancy for men was just forty-eight. Professor Winston: Time Shift: Health Before the NHS: The Road to Recovery, BBC 2012
Childbirth could be life-threatening. What treatment there was had to be paid for by the patient. ibid.
More than 150/1000 would die before their first birthday. ibid.
The moment of birth was an obvious place to start. ibid.
Pregnancy and childbirth was still a major threat to their lives. ibid.
Public laundries. Bath houses. And maternity clinics. ibid.
Rickets. Many in public health were determined to find a cure. Rickets is caused by a lack of Vitamin D. ibid.
Before the National Health Service the hospital was not always the kind of place you would go to get better. Forbidding, rudimentary and reserved for the destitute, hospitals were a last resort. Timeshift: Health before the NHS: A Medical Revolution, BBC 2012
Leading up to the NHS, Hospitals would undergo an extraordinary transformation. ibid.
Access to good hospital health care became a right. ibid.
One of the period’s biggest killers: childhood disease. ibid.
Women giving birth in hospitals for the first time. ibid.
They called it the Iron Lung. Polio was a virus that attacked the central nervous system and disabled the muscles it infected. ibid.
Getting into hospitals at all was getting harder. ibid.
The old workhouse infirmaries mainly reserved for the long term sick and the elderly. ibid.
Fifty thousand hospital beds were added in just a few months. ibid.
The government faced opposition from the medical profession. ibid.
It was the dawn of a new age. But it hadn’t emerged from nowhere. This had been a long revolution built on decades of innovation. ibid.
Healthcare for all – free at the point of service from cradle to grave. ibid.
The deadly disease gripping the nation, and the devastated families left in its wake ... It’s now reaching crisis levels. Tonight: The Diabetes Epidemic, ITV 2014
More than half a million of us are walking around with undiagnosed Type 2 diabetes. ibid.
Worrying ourselves sick: is searching for symptoms online turning us into a nation of cyber-chondriacs. Or is digital diagnoses just the start? But does it mean NHS GP practices are being left behind? Tonight: Dr Google: Do DIY Diagnoses Work? ITV 2018
This is a story about the forgotten, the invisible and the most vulnerable amongst us. It’s a programme about the people who often struggle on the margins of society, and who use the NHS again and again. It’s also about the people who care for them. And about a model of care that could revolutionise our NHS. Tonight: Frontline Care: Saving the NHS? ITV 2018
Hand in hand with poverty comes a whole range of social and medical issues. ibid.
Diets: trust your gut. How do you know if you have good gut microbes? Can you change them for better? And for worse? Tonight: Diet: Trust Your Gut? ITV 2020
The influence of gut microbes on the nation’s health is now modern medicine’s big areas of interest. ibid.
Paying to escape a seven-million-long waiting list. Record numbers buying healthcare here and abroad. A once simple operation now life threatening after years of waiting. And buying treatment whose delay could cost more. Tonight: Buy Back Your Health NHS v Private, ITV 2023
How to be healthier for longer. The good and bad habits. What are the changes we can all make? And what could the consequences be if we don’t? … The small lifestyle changes we can all make. Tonight: How to Age Well: Your Lifestyle, ITV 2023
People desperate for medication. Pharmacies struggling to stay afloat. Frustrations boiling over. So what’s going wrong? Tonight: Pharmacies: The New NHS Frontline? ITV 2024
On average eight pharmacies are closing down every week. ibid.
It’s estimated around 90,000 die every year after being placed on the LCP on the NHS. It was designed for cancer patients. Dispatches: Death on the Wards, Channel 4 2013
And even food and drink can be stopped. ibid.
The LCP is close to legalised euthanasia. ibid.
Can doctors accurately tell when someone is dying? ibid.
Marion died after twelve days on the Liverpool Care Pathway. ibid.
The Liverpool Care Pathway is accepted practice in most hospitals. ibid.
The government has ordered a review. ibid.
Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs, not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less. Dianne Feinstein
My name is Linda Pino. I am here primarily today to make a public confession: in the spring of ’87 as a physician I did not demand the necessary operation that would have saved his [Tracey Pearce, died of Kidney Cancer] life, and thus caused his death. No person and no group has held me accountable for this, because what in fact I did was I saved the company half a million dollars ... And secured my reputation as a good healthcare reviewer. Managed Health Care Quality Standards hearing, health reviewer, Humana, C-Span2
Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God, and value it next to a good conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of; a blessing that money cannot buy. Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler
Obama has even rejected the Federal Healthcare Model and virtually said to the States – Well, you can organise it as you wish. John Pilger, In Conversation
In this programme I want to look at how health has become a battleground between Reason and Superstition. Richard Dawkins: Enemies of Reason: The Irrational Health Service, Channel 4 2007
Americans tend to believe they have the best healthcare in the world, but in truth it is a second-rate system and destined to get a lot worse and much more expensive. Donald Barlett and James Steel
Ehrlichman: We have now narrowed down the vice-president’s problems on this thing to one issue, and that is whether we should include these Health Maintenance Organisations like Edgar Kaiser’s Permanente thing.
Richard Nixon: You know I’m not too keen on any of these damn medical programs.
Ehrlichman: This is a private enterprise one.
Nixon: Well, that appeals to me.
Ehrlichman: Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. I had Edgar Kaiser come in and talk to me about this – and I went into some depth – all of the incentives are toward less medical care, because the less care they give them, the more money they make.
Nixon: Fine. Richard Nixon Tapes 17th February 1971 5:23 p.m.
cf.
I am proposing today a new national health strategy. The purpose of this program is simply this: I want America to have the finest healthcare in the world, and I want every American to have that care when he needs it. President Richard Nixon, 18th February 1971
Today I am announcing the formation of the President’s taskforce on national health reform, chaired by the first lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. Bill Clinton
And if you think socialised medicine is a good idea, ask a Canadian. George H W Bush
Now I am honoured and pleased to sign this historic piece of legislation: the Medicare Prescription Drug Modernisation Act of 2003. George W Bush
Jobs? There are no jobs. John Q 2002 starring Denzel Washington & Robert Duvall & James Woods & Daniel E Smith & Anne Heche & Ray Liotta & Shawn Hatosy & Heath Wahlquist & David Thornton & Laura Harring & Troy Beyer & Kevin Connolly & Troy Winbush et al, director Nick Cassavetes, pal
He’s going to need a transplant or he’s going to die. ibid. doctor
You’re going to have to guarantee payment before I can put your son’s name on the list. ibid. administrator
I’m not asking you any more, doctor. I’m telling you. ibid. Washington
From now on free healthcare for everyone. ibid.
I’m waiting on a miracle, OK? ibid.
When people are sick, they deserve a little help. ibid.
In Europe alone 30 million people suffer from rare diseases; nearly half of these are undiagnosed. Medical Mysteries: The Woman Who Smells of Fish, Channel 5 2016
We meet a boy whose behaviour was terrifyingly transformed overnight. Plus a woman giving off an unpleasant odour. And an athlete whose love of exercise is endangering her life. ibid.
Cameron: a cocktail of drugs is masking the symptoms of a mysterious illness which has transformed him. ibid.
The smell isn’t typical stale sweat … ‘Fish that has been left out in the warm.’ ibid.