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May 3, 2007

Crisis in socialized British maternity wards

By Ethel C. Fenig

While Hillary and the other Democratic presidential candidates duke it out over who has the best socialized medicine health plan, with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger chiming in from the California Republican sidelines, read about some maternity "horror stories" in that socialized medicine haven, England. 

Spurred by the unnecessary dangerous conditions involving the birth of his first child, a reporter relates the results of his program's undercover  investigation in maternity wards.  And what he learned shocked him.  Despite the British health services promises (this is socialized medicine remember)  

In 2004, there was a pledge that every woman in full-blown labour should have access to 'a designated midwife 100 per cent of the time'.

And only last month, Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt promised every mother would have the right to opt for a home birth, overseen by a midwife.

Yet the Royal College Of Midwives says the system is 3,000 midwives short and one-third of maternity units had their budgets cut last year.

All of this while Britain's birth-rate goes up. Small wonder that a report from Oxford University into maternity care in Britain found that two-thirds of mothers said they felt they had been abandoned too soon after giving birth.

Watching the tape of a woman undergoing  heavy labor in the corridor because of overcrowding, a British university midwifery professor acknowledged

"These are Third World conditions. No farmer would let an animal they valued labour with that degree of stress and anxiety in a tense public place."
Oh of course, our American system isn't perfect.  But as we've pointed out numerous times

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2005/09/british_nhs_illegally_removing.html,

http://americanthinker.com/blog/2006/11/patients_265day_wait_caps_lita.html,

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/01/socialized_medicine_is_not_the.html  

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/01/reality_strikes_british_social.html,

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2006/03/more_socialized_medicine_failu.html

government run health care is definitely not the solution, as easy as the candidates with their elaborate position papers make it sound during their debates. Anything so complicated, which is seemingly so easy to repair, will end up more complicated and more broken under any one of their plans.  We have been warned. 
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