Hippo Who?

English socialized medicine hard at work:

Derek Ogley, 70, had just been discharged from a ward when he took a turn for the worse - so technically he wasn't in hospital.

His daughter Julie, 46, said: "I went to ask the nurses to get a doctor but they said they couldn't as it wasn't hospital procedure because he'd already been discharged. They said I would have to call 999 to get an ambulance to collect him and take him round to accident and emergency."

Not willing to wait, she drove her father the three-minute journey to A&E where he was eventually diagnosed with pancreatitis.

The "reasoning" involved?

A hospital spokesperson said: "It is the case that, if someone has been officially discharged from hospital, then they would have to either go to A&E or be referred by their own GP to be re-admitted.

"They can't just be taken back to the ward because it would play havoc with the bed system."

::gasp!:: Not the bed system!

Now it's all clear to me. We wouldn't want a sick patient to interfere with the carefully planned bed schedule, now would we?

Get ready, folks; that will be the state of American medical care after another twenty years of leftist social engineering. As a bonus, we'll get to pay for it twice: once in the form of taxes, and again in ever-increasing health insurance costs. What a bargain!