Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on August 26, 2009

And the unbelievable horror stories about government-run / socialized / single-payer / nationalized health care (call it what you want, they all suck huge amounts of money out of taxpayers and consistently lower the quality of health care) just keep coming and coming…

Previous health care nightmare blog posts… real eye-openers:
Walking Barefoot in a Pasture: Stepping in the Cow Patties of Government-Run Health Care Horror Stories (video)

More Cow Patties, More Government-Run Health Care Horror Stories: US Military’s VA Health System (video).

Intelligent, rational people actually WANT government-run ObamaCare, when our government is trillions of dollars in debt because of Medicare and Medicaid, and has already failed in providing satisfactory services on Native American reservations and providing consistent military veterans’ health care? Strike the words “intelligent” and “rational”… nothing about this is intelligent nor makes any sense. Obama has said his health care bill will be nothing like the UK’s or Canada’s or other countries where socialized health care has failed. And we believe him WHY?

From Mail Online News:

The babies born in hospital corridors: Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices and hospital toilets
Mail Online News, UK
By Jenny Hope and Nick Mcdermott
August 26, 2009

Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.

The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets – even a caravan – went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.

Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.

Latest figures show that over the past two years, there were at least:

• 63 births in ambulances and 608 in transit to hospitals;
• 117 births in A&E departments, four in minor injury units and two in medical assessment areas;
• 115 births on other hospital wards and 36 in other unspecified areas including corridors;
• 399 in parts of maternity units other than labour beds, including postnatal and antenatal wards and reception areas.

Additionally, overstretched maternity units shut their doors to any more women in labour on 553 occasions last year.

Babies were born in offices, lifts, toilets and a caravan, according to the Freedom of Information data for 2007 and 2008 from 117 out of 147 trusts which provide maternity services.

One woman gave birth in a lift while being transferred to a labour ward from A&E while another gave birth in a corridor, said East Cheshire NHS Trust.

Others said women had to give birth on the wards – rather than in their own maternity room – because the delivery suites were full.

Tory health spokesman Andrew Lansley, who obtained the figures, said Labour had cut maternity beds by 2,340, or 22 per cent, since 1997. At the same time birth rates have been rising sharply – up 20 per cent in some areas.

Mr Lansley said: ‘New mothers should not be being put through the trauma of having to give birth in such inappropriate places. While some will be unavoidable emergencies, it is extremely distressing for them and their families to be denied a labour bed because their maternity unit is full.

‘It shows the incredible waste that has taken place that mothers are getting this sort of sub-standard treatment despite Gordon Brown’s tripling of spending on the NHS. Labour have let down mothers by cutting the number of maternity beds and by shutting down maternity units.’

The NHS employs the equivalent of around 25,000 full-time midwives in England, but the Government has promised to recruit 3,400 more.

However, the Royal College of Midwives estimates at least 5,000 more are needed to provide the quality of service pledged in the Government’s blueprint for maternity services, Maternity Matters.

At the same time almost half of all midwives are set to retire in the next decade…

Worthwhile reading: Senate GOP Doctors: Have a Better Plan for Health Care, Not Socialized

Related reading on government-run Native American health care:
NewsVine: Promises, promises: Indian Health Care Victims
Hot Air: An American Government Health Care System You Should Know
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Native Americans Against Obama: ‘The Hype’
Indian Country Today: Trahant: The double standard of government-run health care: Indian Health Service
Mommy: Ta’Shon’s Story: A Look at the Government’s Record on Health Care
HoodaThunk?: The single-payer healthcare system in our own backyard.

Additional health care reading:
The B.S. Report: Video Of The Day: Glenn Beck; AARP: Leading The Elderly To The Slaughter?
The Weekly Standard: Choosy Moms Don’t Choose Socialized Medicine
Telegraph: ‘Cruel and neglectful’ care of one million NHS patients exposed
Right Angles: Single-payer horror stories
Ann Coulter, TownHall: Take Two Aspirin and Call Me When Your Cancer is Stage 4
Goodtimepolitics: 1,200 Veterans Falsely Told by VA They had Fatal Disease and Birth on pavement ‘after being refused ambulance’
Telegraph.co.uk: Sufferers pull out teeth due to lack of dentists
Track-A-’Crat: Another Health Care Victim
Charles Krauthammer, National Review Online: Why Obamacare Is Sinking – You can’t fake health-care nirvana in legislation
Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion: Throw Out The Democratic Health Care Sponge
Amused Cynic: Obama disses Urologists….Who you callin’ “wee-weed up,” Kemosabe?
Hot Air: Dems’ new rallying cry: Let’s pass this trillion-dollar travesty for Teddy and Coming up: circumcision campaigns
Ztower: “I say toh-mah-toh, you say toh-may-toh, you say poh-tah-to, I say poh-tay-toh…let’s call the whole thing off!”
Gary Graham, Big Hollywood: Yes We Canadian! — The Public Option
QandO: Skeptical Americans Continue To Say No To Democratic Health Care Plan
Gerald Warner, Telegraph: Legal outsourced suicide for Britons would be a decline into Netherlands-style degeneracy
Denver Post: CDC to recommend circumcision for all baby boys?
Vigilocanis (Watch Dog): Critical care breast cancer patients wait average of 34 days under Scotland’s government run system
American Thinker: Congress on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
VotingFemale Speaks!: Obama-Pelosi Declare WAR; Demonizing Health Industry; Warning, Socialist Demons At Work
Lighthouse Patriot Journal: Govt Watch: “Change” For the Worse and No Marked Change in Politics as Usual
American Spectator: Imagine You Are a Doctor
Clinging to G & G: A few simple facts
Liberty’s Army: Betsy McCaughey: Government-Run Health Care’s Assault on Seniors
New York Times: For Public, Obama Didn’t Fill in Health Blanks
Hot Air Green Room: Obamacare would already be law, if not for you stupid Americans
Arlenearmy’s Blog: Will Doctors Bail Out?
Frugal Café Blog Zone: “War on Senior Citizens”: Mark Levin Interviews Dr. Betsy McCaughey on ObamaCare Details and Billions, Trillions, and More: CBO Releases Appalling Dollar Amount for Crappy ObamaCare and Dems’ Sheep-herding Health Welfare Program Like Eastern Bloc: Reckless Disregard for Economic & Fiscal Reality and Audience Cracks Up When MO Rep. Carnahan Claims ObamaCare Will Save Money: “If It’s So Good, Why Doesn’t Congress Have to Be on It?” (video) and Rush Limbaugh: Obama on Edge as Magic Fades; DeMint Hits Nerve with “Waterloo”
Ace of Spades HQ: AP Bends the Curve of the Narrative, Admitting Obama Is Kinda Blowing It
Michelle Malkin: Flashback: Who’s funding the Obamacare Astroturf campaign? and Sheila Leavitt: Another wacky doctor for Obamacare; Updated and Inconvenient links of the week: Obama and the LaRouche poster and Video: No, you can’t just ram Obamacare through “fast” and Axelrod’s profits: Uh, who’s on the take from the drug lobby again?!?! and All aboard the Astroturf bus! and Barack Obama speaks the truth! Update: Mayo not okay-o with Obamacare and Undercover at an Obama health care meet-up
The Questionable Authority: Military Health Care – It’s Broken
The Hip Hop Republican: Quit Messing with Veterans Benefits

Categories: Government, Health, International Relations, Social and Political Climate
Tags: America, Democrat, giving birth, government waste, government-run health care, IHS, Indian Health Services, nationalized health care, Native Americans, ObamaCare, political, politics, president, rationing, Single-Payer System, socialized health care, socialized medicine, taxes, tea parties, tea party, town hall protest, UK, UK hospitals, UK maternity, United Kingdom