Errors kill 15,000 aged patients a month: study

We are told to fear natural therapies because they are 'untested' and therefore, unsafe. Yet only about 15% of mainstream medical treatment have ever been shown to be either safe or effective and we see time and time again that Western medicine is the number 1 cause of death in most developed countries today. Instead of screaming for better access to medical insurance as Americans seem to be doing, perhaps it's time to start kicking up a stink about why only Western medicine is part of the official channels for reimbursement via insurance and HMOs. If payments are based on results, most Western medical practices should be user pays only and most natural therapies should be provided for free.

Mistakes and unavoidable problems kill an estimated 15,000 elderly U.S. patients every month in hospitals, U.S. government investigators reported on Tuesday.

More than 13 percent of patients covered by Medicare, the government health insurance for the elderly, or about 134,000 people monthly have some sort of so-called adverse event each month. These include mistakes such as surgical errors or sometimes unavoidable problems such as an infection spread in the hospital, or patients having their blood sugar fall to unusually low levels.