The video above makes one ache. A woman wanting a child is given an chemotherapy/abortifacent drug by mistake because her first and last name are almost identical to the first and last name of a nearly 60 year old woman who does need to receive the drug for legitimate non-abortion medical reasons.
This video gives the reason why you are asked your name several time in the hospital, even by a nurse who already knows you. This is why your name band is checked over and over. This is why before surgery you are asked what you are going to have done to you and on what site. This is why there is a mandatory pause before a surgeon will begin a surgery. This “time out” is designed to allow for a final recheck before the knife comes down. All those are safety steps designed to ensure that the wrong thing is not done to you. In spite of that there are still medical mistakes made every year because human beings are fallible. The woman in the video above was given the wrong drug in one of those medical mistakes.
However, white sands sarasota will point out that all those procedures that I named above were not freely begun by hospitals. Rather the procedures I named above were imposed upon hospitals at a national level as a result of growing medical error. As the years have passed, more and more safety procedures have been unwillingly forced on hospitals in an effort to control the type of error shown above. The free market did not work to control medical errors. What has begun to lower medical errors is outside regulatory impositions by both accrediting agencies and by the federal government.
Next time you think that government regulation always needs to be done away with, think of the case above and the thousands of similar cases that have led to many types of federal regulations in many fields other than medicine. And, think again of what a country we would live in if conservative federal judges would keep claiming that the commerce clause did not allow the federal government to use its powers to regulate the medicine you receive, the food you eat, the cars you drive, etc. The growth of federal government regulation has not been the result of a takeover conspiracy, but the result of a demand by the people that many national problems (such as exploding car gas tanks–anyone remember the Pinto?) be controlled by national government regulation.
I appreciate your putting a human face and highlighting compassion in the topics you cover.
Another force that has contributed to hospitals and other entities making changes for the better when it comes to patient/consumer protection has been the threat of lawsuits holding these entities accountable for their negligence and errors..
However, those who rail against “government regulation” are also those most likely to bewail “frivolous lawsuits” and to call for “tort reform”.
I am glad you pointed out the role of lawsuits in bringing some needed change. But, it is also absolutely true that folks are against imposed regulations, whether imposed as a result of lawsuits or imposed by a regulatory agency.
In other words, whatever may be said theoretically, in practice many conservatives are against either consumer or employee protections. That is, until something happens to them!