*sigh*

[electricland]

Via Dr. B's Finest Kind Medical Clinic and Fish Market, Mark Steyn writes:

"After much stonewalling, the Province of Quebec's Health Department announced this week that in the last year some 600 Quebecers had died from C. difficile, a bacterium acquired in hospital. In other words, if, say, Bill Clinton had gone for his heart bypass to the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he would have had the surgery, woken up the next day swimming in diarrhea and then died. It's a bacterium caused by inattention to hygiene -- by unionized, unsackable cleaners who don't clean properly; by harassed overstretched hospital staff who don't bother washing their hands as often as they should. So 600 people have been killed by the filthy squalor of disease-ridden government hospitals. That's the official number. Unofficially, if you're over 65, the hospitals will save face and attribute your death at their hands to "old age" or some such and then "lose" the relevant medical records."

Swipe, swipe.

Maybe so, but (a) bullshit (if you'll pardon the term in this context) -- try not to be so hyperbolic. (b) Why pick on the Vic, Mark? The outbreak was at the Centre hospitalier universitaire de Sherbrooke. And (c), what's this "government hospitals" crap? Like most hospitals in Canada, the CHUS is funded and monitored by government, yes, but so what? Are you saying privately funded, for-profit hospitals are by definition magically better, more hygienic places? 'Cause it ain't necessarily so.

(ETA the final link there.)

Comments

[monkeycommando.livejournal.com]

Notice that the unionized cleaning staff are incompetent, but the sainted hospital staff are harrassed and over-stretched.

Notice that (fully) private hospitals could never, possibly employ unionized workers.

I mean, I'm relatively union-neutral, and often ready to believe many bad things about unionized environments, but come on now.

Also, I think the Bill Clinton example (which I've seen come up elsewhere with regard to bashing the Canadian health system) is never useful. He's a fucking ex-president!!! He is, by definition, off the charts of useful thought experiment or counter-factual supposition.

[sevathediva.livejournal.com]

We get this plenty often in US hospitals.

Though, I have to say, that stuff has a distinctive odor (sorry, TMI), and you'd better believe I'm gonna wash my hands if I get diarrhea on them.

seva

[electricland.livejournal.com]

Oh, I believe it!

Of course all this came out around the same time as the necktie study (http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2004/06/21/prsa0621.htm) -- I wonder how much C. difficile was spread with ties?

[electricland.livejournal.com]

And of course this leaves out all the unionized nurses. *rollseyes*

You are quite right about Clinton examples...