U.K. hospitals seeing maternity 'crisis'

UPI ^ | 03/04/07

[GaryMontana]

Socialist Medicine at it's best coming to a hospital near you thanks to Hitlary Clinton.

[GaryMontana]

Socialist Medicine at it's best coming to a hospital near you thanks to Hitlary Clinton.

[neodad]

Proof that you get what you pay for.

[Quick or Dead]

This is the model of "Universal Healthcare" Hillary, Barack, and Silky Pony want to inflict on the American public.

[Red6]

You make a good point.

No matter what we do to cut costs, when you expect state of the art care and service, that is fast and convenient, you will pay.

On the other hand, have you noticed that the same people who are telling us the merits of social heal care and how our health care costs are exploding are also NEVER the ones who mention how in some US hospitals nearly 40% of those seen in ER's are illegal aliens receiving care at others expense? Will Hillary who will try to weave together majorities by pandering to minorities ever mention that? What do you think? Some topics are taboo politically, even if they shed a slightly different light on the real cause of some of the problems in the first place.

[knarf]

Before I consider any political or social ramification(s) ... I would want to know why women can't deliver a baby without dieing ?

Is it lack of vitamins?
Lack of vitamin rich food(s)?
Are British women 'broken'?

Seems to me that the act of conception is pretty much routine and the growth of a baby in the womb would be again, I assume, routine ... so that takes care of the preliminary production.

What happens at birth that causes a death ... or shortly after the birth?

Red and blue make purple, always ... without fail ... variations, but purple none-the-less.

[NonValueAdded]

Just out of curiosity, I wonder how many of the fatalities also received in vitro services or other means to "force" the pregnancy?

[AlaskaErik]

But hey, it's "free".

[Fairview]

Silky Pony doesn't really want socialized medicine. There are more doctors and hospitals to sue under the present system, and with bigger payouts, than there would be under socialized medicine.

[Quick or Dead]

Ah, but Silky Pony already has a plan to get the money, namely by raising taxes on the "rich" to pay for Socialized Medicine. It won't be about "Edwards the trial lawyer and channeler of dead babies" anymore, it will about "Edwards the President and Herald of the Great Society Redux."

[amchugh]

I usually see more articles bashing Canadian health care, and calling it socialist. The reality is that US Government per capita spending on health care is $2548 (Medicare), exceeding private and public Canadian per capita spending at $2312, and the UK private and public per capita spending at $1461. We are the ones with the true socialist system, but the reason we don't see the same failures as Canada and the UK is the additional per capita private spending of $1630 for a total of $4178. So any analysis or comparison of the systems should take into account the fact that we outspend them massively.

Please feel free to cite a study that disproves this. I'm not a medical economist, and would really like to be proved wrong on this.

[amchugh]

Also, before we crow, Britain still has a lower infant mortality rate than the US at 6.25 vs 7.00 per thousand. (If you believe the OECD stats)

[amchugh]

sorry, 6.05, based on 5.0 last year times 1.21 for 21% growth. I thought it was 25%.

[Desron13]

"Experts warn that 10,000 more midwives are needed to curb the number of deaths and injuries during childbirth."

I thought that Europeans weren't having kids any more. Must be all those enlightened Muslims popping out a kid and a half per year. Hmmm... Comforting thought eh?

[yankeedame]

What happens at birth that causes a death ... or shortly after the birth?

Pray God it's not puerperal (child-birth fever) that killed so many post-delivery women in the past. If it were so than socialized medicine has taken a giant leap back into the 17th century.

[LadyNavyVet]

We do outspend them massively, for the same reason that a Mercedes costs more than a Yugo. With medical care, as with everything else, you get what you pay for. The solution is to get the government further OUT of healthcare, not further in. Too much government increases the cost of everything. How much is a toilet seat on a military aircraft versus a toilet seat from Home Depot?

[amchugh]

I agree that government should have a much more limited role in healthcare, but my point was that our Government spending on health care is greater than their total public+private sector spending on health care. We can hardly tell them their socialist health care is the problem when our own system has even more government involvement. We need to focus on cleaning up our own backyard.

Also, statistically despite the queues and waiting for treatment, they are getting better results on infant mortality, and a host of other medical issues. This is not a condemnation of our own system, but it's certainly not going to further efforts here politically to decouple government from healthcare.

[LadyNavyVet]

"...they are getting better results on infant mortality..."

I think you have to be careful to compare apples to apples. We have a LOT of uninsured, illegal alien women accessing our system to deliver babies without prenatal care. That affects infant mortality rates. Level that playing field and I bet our numbers look pretty good. And, as the article states, mother mortality is on the rise under the British health care system. I haven't seen any indication that's happening over here.

Also, another thing that is never counted in US-European healthcare comparisons is that our huge monetary investment includes the vast majority of the medical research and development done worldwide, the benefits of which are shared with the rest of the world at very little cost.

[amchugh]

"I think you have to be careful to compare apples to apples." Hence my qualifier on the statement of the word 'statistical'. If you factored out those in this country who are not covered by private or public health I'm sure you'd get a better idea of the overall quality of our medical care. Indeed, we rank 1st in the world in responsiveness of our medical care. But if we can not beat these countries out on the stats (we should probably come up with better metrics so that we do; lies, damn lies, and statistics), we are going to have a harder slog in terms of improving our public policy in ways that make our system less like theirs instead of more.

Britain is catching up to us at a maternal mortality of 13/100,000 (2006) up from 11/100000 (2000). We have 20/100,000 (2000). I do not have data for 2006, so I do not know if we are trending up or down.

As for medical research, our federal drug funding is 6 cents per capita. Our total NIH funding is about $104 per capita. I'm not sure totals like that are that large compared to our spending levels on services. Do not forget also that foreign countries contribute to medical research in the US in the form of prescription drug costs.

I think most of the medical economists are thinking now that medical expenditures are rising because demand is so high it is pushing us into huge marginal costs. The emphasis and expectation on responsiveness with our medical system is part of that.

My wife pointed out last night that our healthcare policies are a drive towards fiscal conservatives adopting nanny-state ideas. The specific example was the trans-fat ban. By covering obesity related medical expenses we are not punishing people fiscally for their bad choices, but instead having government step in to legislate against those choices. This has the effect of splitting libertarians and fiscal conservatives on some issues.