As evidenced by this outrageous story from the Daily Mail:

For nine years, Jerome Bartens had to cope with the handicap of being half deaf.

Ever since he was a toddler, the 11-year-old had been unable to hear anything on his right side and doctors said they were unable to help.

Then suddenly the reason for his problems became clear – when the end of a cotton bud popped out of his ear.

His family believe that he must have poked the bud in the ear at the age of two and the tip must have broken off the plastic stem.

The result was that he has always struggled at school, was constantly forced to turn up the volume of the television and music, and became used to everyone shouting at him.

But now he is waking up to a whole world of noise – while his father Carsten is demanding to know why medical experts failed to identify the problem for so long.

Why indeed. I wonder how an easily diagnosed and treated injury could have gone unrecognized by an overwhelmed socialized system where doctors are forced to give most patients the bare minimum of treatment to make time for the backlog while at the same time a lack of a free market makes the idea of excelling in any profession unrewarding?