Marathon Pundit: British ObamaCare update: D-Day veteran left to starve, family hires private nurse

Saturday, February 26, 2011

British ObamaCare update: D-Day veteran left to starve, family hires private nurse

"I'll be honest, there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well." Barack Obama, June 15, 2009.

British D-Day veteran Albert Buck not only survived the beaches of Normandy but he fought his way into Germany to liberate prisoners in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp a year later.

But the UK's Mirror says that Buck looked like one of the Holocaust victims he rescued when he died. His son Michael told the newspaper that his father "was transformed from a sprightly, [180 pound] 84-year-old to a [70 pound] skeleton. The family had to hire a nurse so he could eat and drink.

But Buck broke his hip and ended up back in a hospital run by Britain's government-run health care agency, the National Health Service.

From the Mirror:

"There was no geriatric ward. His food and drinks were left out of reach and he wet the bed."

So the family hired a former care home nurse. Michael said: "She made a massive difference. He was well enough to be discharged and he went to a nursing home, but he had a relapse and had to go back to hospital. When he went back our hearts sank – we knew he'd never come out.

"He died a few days later, a skeleton. What dad needed was to be on a geriatric ward where nurses are specifically trained to help the elderly. He needed to be cared for, not ignored."