I kept hoping that this was a terrible mistake, and that the story would be retracted. Alas, it seems to be be all too real, and an insult to the Hippocratic Oath.
From the Telegraph (UK)
An elderly woman was ordered to find a new GP because the “carbon footprint” of her two-mile round trips to the surgery where she had been treated for 30 years was too large.
Avril Mulcahy, 83, was told to address the “green travelling issues” over her journeys from her home in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, to the West Road Surgery.
The letter said: “Our greatest concern is for your health and convenience but also taking into consideration green travelling issues. Re: Carbon footprints and winter weather conditions, we feel it would be advisable for patients to register at surgeries nearer to where they live. We would be very grateful if you could make the necessary arrangements to re-register at another practice.”
…
“To be treated like this, just because I live too far away or for what I feel is a reaction to my complaint, is disgraceful. It feels like they are just coming up with an excuse to get rid of me.”
Given the treatment I have experienced for my views, I wouldnot be at all surprised if this grows. As Andrew Bolt says: “They really are mad you know…“
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The last time I went to the local A&E (Colchester) I had a severe ear infection which seemed on the point of bursting my eardrum. I live alone so had to drive myself – a 16 mile round trip. The hospital is so badly signed I drove for nearly an hour round and round the one-way bypass system trying to find it – nobody to ask at 11pm of course: people don’t live on industrial estates.
I was finally seen by an Eastern European lady doctor at c3am. Her English was minimal. She asked me what she should give me for my ailment – I said I’m not sure which antibiotic, but make it strong. She consulted a manual for several minutes with furrowed brow, then gave me a scrip for some capsules which had little effect on my ear but made me feel very ill indeed. I staggered to my own doctor at 8am – a 12 mile round trip and yes they are the closest – and he rolled his eyes and said the antibiotic she’d given me would have had no effect on my ear. I looked it up later – it was pretty effective for my next chest infection, even cutting the capsules in half!
I don’t blame the lady doctor, who’d no doubt been flown in from Poland or somewhere for the night shift: I expect she was very tired from lack of sleep, and needed the money for her family. I only bothered to complain about the signage to the hospital – I gave up on that after a pointless exchange with a lady jobsworth at the Council, who refused to accept the signs were inadequate and just kept telling me where they were.
My point that even if they WERE where she siad they were, they were clearly invisible since I kept missing them, seemed to escape here: but as we know, ‘the customer is always wrong’ these days!
PS I went to my own doc at 8am on Monday, the trip to hospital having been made on Saturday night. I was lucky enough then to have a practice which had a two hour open surgery every morning, and on four of those days you could see your own GP – no appt necessary. The five of them had a day off each week from the surgery
I would advise Avril Mulcahy to keep showing for treatment up the West Road Surgery clinic in Essex. The ridiculous requst in the letter is nothing more than is half witted attempt to scare Avril into compliance. The flatulent edit has no legal weight and the Essex clinic cannot refuse service to her unless they wish to initiate a lawsuit they would surely lose. When cofronted by Patty Paperpushingham when she shows up for treatment, Mrs.Mulcahy should just tell her to kiss her lilly white fundament.
The way these things are calculated is that the doctor divides his carbon footprint by the number of patients he sees. That’s how her 2 km kicked it over the limit.
What’s the surprise? They’re going to ban even surgical anesthetic gases, aren’t they?
I guess “Green” is more Soylent then it used to be.
“You are 83 therefore a waste of resources.” “The time and money can be spent on
someone useful.” “Like a Barrister(Lawyer) or MP(Congressman).”
“Good Day..”
80 years old….
…isn’t this something Obama and the democrats alluded to
“The story here is not about climate alarmism, it is about using fatuous excuses given pseudo-legitimacy through political correctness to get rid of an inconvenient and, given her age, probably expensive patient. This is pretty standard for state provision in the UK I am ashamed to say”
I reckon you’re right and rationing or non-price discrimination is precisely what you get when you control pricing so basically suck it up luv. The delicious part of it all is the practice is playing the game to perfection and hoisting any forseeable PC objectors on their own petard. Basically- yes all our patients are important to us but you know how it is when it comes to the Planet folks? You’ve got to break a few eggs to consider the Big Omelette. Priceless because right there is the Greenshirts’ jackboot attitude writ large for all to see.
grumpyoldmanuk says:
April 6, 2012 at 2:18 am
Just remember all you Americans – this is what Obama is trying to get you to buy into
Two mile rt? Hey grumpy, better not plan on coming to the US for healthcare services. When Obama’s HHS Sec. Sebelius hears of this, she’ll probably lobby Obama to issue an executive order to the INS to refuse entry into the US to anyone coming for medical surgeries or treatments. Just TOO big of a carbon footprint. Tell them to get their health care in their home country.
What a load of absolute tosh being spouted here.
The UK NHS is more cost effective than any private health scheme. (just whom is paying for replacement of privately inserted breast implants that may leak – It is not the people who inserted them!)
A search here
http://www.nhs.uk/Pages/HomePage.aspx
shows “We found 15 GP practices within 1 mile of xxxxxx ”
5 are within 0.5 miles
She is housebound, she has no transport, she will require home visits by GPs or transport (ambulance/car from local hospital – how far is their round trip?).
but mainly green issues is an excuse to reduce the now underfunded GP system burden of those requiring greater support.
Her treatment is costing her nothing.
I wonder how much it would cost in the US?
A copy of the letter is posted here:
http://teapartybase.com/2012/04/04/elderly-uk-woman-allegedly-forced-to-find-new-doctor-because-of-%E2%80%98carbon-footprint%E2%80%99/
This should be strictly left to Podiatrists. Footprint and all.
When someone speaks to me about “carbon footprints”, I always say. What about my carbon foot and the rest of my carbon body? Do I need offsets simply to exist?
But if the citizens of the UK *like* being treated this way by their government and keep returning these people to office, who are we to judge? Personally, I believe it is absolutely nuts but it’s their country.
We are [UK] a nation of box tickers and my suspicion would be that the lady in question gives the practice too many negative points. Suppose, for example, that the typical consultancy time per customer is five minutes and she takes up twenty five. Come “Excel time” 25/1 is a problem, 25/5 is a “pass” (20/5 is “progress”).
The problem Mrs Mulcahy will have is that she has grown up viewing the doctor as not only a medical practitioner but as, especially at her age, someone to “chat” with. You visit once a week for both medical advice and to bad mouth your grandson who never comes to visit any more. Of course the Doctor she had previously is retired or dead and the new practice can’t even remember her name. Now she’s a drain on the exemplary statistics they are aiming to hand in to the bean counters next year.
I’m just as bad (but not as old). The doctor I had into my late 20’s was the same one that cut the umbilical. My current “practice” isn’t so bad but there are one or two there that I avoid like the clap. Box tickers.
Back to the “Carbon footprint”. I suspect that this was included by someone in serious need of a PR course. They would have no clue that they might become national news and even less that they would get to be a TLP at WUWT. I’m not defending them BTW – google “Westcliff-on-Sea surgeries” for a list of smiling faces (and their e-mail addresses) :^)
“What a load of absolute tosh being spouted here”
It is and it isn’t jjthomas. When the left Green quantitative control freaks attempted to create their climate controlled Utopia, it was inevitably vulnerable to massive private and public rorting. OTOH we’ve had the usual private sector rentseekers and carpetbaggers plundering the trough (picking off winners and turning them into taxeating losers) while OTO the public sector builds sociology departments and climate change empires, etc and naturally all that eventually filters down to local GP health clinics on the public drip. It’s all one big gravy train or excuse to justify whatever one can make fit into the green paradigm for one’s own convenience. You can’t blame a local GP clinic for taking the easy road of concern for the Planet to get rid of a problem patient, when all above them, every man and his dog is doing the same in a plethora of sanctimonious ways.
Meanwhile the little bloke fed up with it all in the ether above him, latches on to the plight of a little old lady battling the ‘system’. She’s just a hot button focus for all that the little bloke knows is rotten in Denmark or Brussells or….?
The Hypocritic Oath
I swear by Mother Earth and Gaia and Algore, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of the IPCC in whose steps I walk, and gladly propagandize such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the planet, all measures that are required, avoiding those twin traps of denialhood and anarchic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to fascism as well as climate science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding have no place in the new world order.
I will be ashamed to say “I know not”, and will not listen to skeptical opinion when climate science is in doubt.
I will invade the privacy of my patients, and every aspect of their lives. Especially in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, I will judge their emission sins and weigh up their carbon footprint. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced using the same criteria. Above all, I must play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick planet, whose illness may affect all of us. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent carbon emissions whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body but not, of course, the deniers.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and nature, be respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the biosphere and may I long experience the joy of curbing carbon emissions.
I have experience of health care both sides of the pond and although in this case it may be that a spiteful, tactless GP does not know his Perineum from his Olecranon I still think the NHS has the best system. No it is not free it is paid for out of National Insurance contributions (tax) but when you require treatment you don’t have to worry about the cost. I know ‘Brits’ who have retired in ‘the States’ and can no longer afford health costs so returned to use the NHS.
What next??? Maybe when a child falls down a well, they won’t rescue the child due to the carbon footprint required by the rescue equipment.
There is no adequate response to this insanity, except to join the disbelieving, horrified chorus of others in an attempt to right this sinking ship. It is so troubling that I don’t even want to face the implications for humanity in this world gone mad.
What I read between the lines was a bit different. What I read was the clinic was practicing “cost control”. At least in the US when a doctor’s office says, “We are no longer taking Medicare patients,” you know what’s happening. But when all patients are “Medicare patients”…
World is no madder than it ever was. Pick up your gun soldier – fight for the future as your grandparents did. For sure you will never win utopia but you can always kick the s**t out of those heading in the other direction.
Ah… the ‘carbon footprint’ is just another item in the list that get considered by the death panels. Yes, Sarah Palin was right all along.
2 mile round trip? No problem, if the temp requires no heat or air conditioning, a Volt might make it ;>
Perhaps the bureaucrats are playing the Easy Points game. Eventually it will come around to them.
Is there a database somewhere calculating everyone’s carbon foot print that general medical practitioners have access to? Even if Avril Mulcahy, 83, Walked the 2 mile round trip to her GP’s for the past 30 years wouldn’t be that remarkable compared to if she were to drive our get the bus there.
The nearest GP to where I live is a 19 mile round trip on a bus, which takes 4 buses to get there and back. I checked! to drive it’s a 7-8 mile round trip which actually reduces my so called ‘carbon foot print’. funny how that works! BTW I haven’t had to visit a medical professional in over 15 years, luckily for me I’ve had a good run health wise, but If I were ever to seek medical assistance it is horrifying to think that because of where I currently live (the middle of nowhere) is now a factor in receiving it.
Oh Waite, my cousin is a medical doctor, I gave her a ring just a second ago and she told me that this carbon foot print nonsense is in fact nonsense.