The next time someone in the media wants to blame budget cutters for premature deaths, remember James Taranto at The Wall Street Journal, who unveiled another story filed under “Great Moments in Socialized Medicine,” once again from jolly old England and the London Daily Mail:
Peter Thompson, 41, was left in a corridor for ten hours before someone noticed he had passed away. In a final act of indignity, hospital auxiliaries pulled his lifeless body across the floor in a manner his family described as like "dragging a dead animal."
The scenes which shame the NHS [National Health Service] were all captured on CCTV. Staff thought Mr. Thompson was merely drunk and left him to "sleep it off."
Yesterday a coroner condemned the death as "wholly preventable."
An inquest heard that the father-of-one, who had consumed a cocktail of drink and drugs, could have been saved had he received emergency treatment.
The hospital’s accident and emergency department was just 200 yards away.
Taranto couldn’t help himself:
Would someone please ask former Enron adviser Paul Krugman to call the Thompson family and relieve their suffering by letting them know "these stories are false"?
