Health roundup

While our envy-of-the-world-though-nobody-wants-to-copy-it state managed health service produces the worst cancer survival rates in western Europe, Michael Cannon at Cato explains one of the absurdities of state health provisioning:

That’s right. For the past 42 years, the federal government has paid hospitals to give grandma an infection, drop her on the floor, or leave a sponge inside her — and then paid the hospital more to put her back together again. That is, if the infection didn’t kill her.

Does anyone really believe that if each patient controlled the health care dollars that employers and the government now control, that it would take patients 42 years to stop rewarding hospitals for medical errors? In other areas of your life, how often do you give more money to a business that screwed you over?

"IT", chorus Windows users.

Natalie Solent at Samizdata reports on... well, go and read it for yourself. I'm too depressed to explain.

That picture is wrong. The part of it that is wrong is the "trying to help." The nurses declined to help.