From the UK Telegraph. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM)
Excerpt:
It was a bitterly cold night in January when Geraldine Weller gave birth in the car park of a London hospital. Three hours earlier, the maternity unit had sent her away. Midwives who said they were short-staffed had confidently told her that it would be “ages yet” before she went into labour. They maintained that view even as her husband made frantic phone calls, reporting from their Surrey home that the baby’s head could now be seen.
In desperation, the couple ignored advice to stay put and drove back to the hospital. With her husband shouting into the security cameras of the maternity unit for help, Mrs Weller stepped from the passenger seat. As she did so, she gave birth to their first child, catching the newborn in one leg of her pyjamas.
She says: “We just huddled together. My husband came back and wrapped Henry in a bath towel, and finally one of the nurses came out and said: ‘What’s this?’ ”
[…]Last month, a survey of 25,000 women who had children in England last winter found that more than one in five was left alone during childbirth at a point when it worried them.
The rest of the article features eyewitness comments from midwives working within the system. Naturally, no real names were used because the NHS sanctions anyone who speaks out against their government-run health care system. The same kind of government-run health care that the Democrats want in this country.
Related posts
- UK patients denied treatment as “public option” system makes cutbacks
- How do governments control costs in a single-payer health care systems?
- NHS patients giving birth in waiting rooms
- What does universal health care really mean?
- How well is government-run health care working out in the UK?
- British national health care system prepares to cut 20 billion dollars
- NHS kills a man’s wife by delaying cancer treatment for 7 months
- How is socialized medicine working out in the UK and Canada?
- Police probe death of NHS hospital patient who begged for water
- How government-run health care leads to euthanasia
- NHS employees leapfrog their own waiting lists to access private health care
- NHS delays treatment for broken arm for four months and counting
- One in six patients misdiagnosed by NHS
- The deadly consequences of rationing health care
- Health care in Britain: question a doctor and lose your children
- How death panels work in the British health care system
- One million NHS patients receive brutally inadequate health care
- 4000 NHS patients denied hospital beds to give birth to children
- Woman gives birth on pavement after NHS refuses to send an ambulance
- NHS hospitals infested with a dozen varieties of vermin
- 39-year old woman is prescribed painkillers and dies after 11-minute NHS exam
- NHS refuses to pay for lower-back painkillers
WINTERY KNIGHT 
I recently discovered your blog while looking for a renaissance-style picture of a painting to Photoshop (see if you can guess which post that was), but when I realised that it was a Christian blog I stayed on to read a little more.
I’ve really enjoyed reading through your site – particularly the apologetics stuff – and I’m so grateful that there are people like you in the church who can unpack some of those arguments and keep an eye on the latest developments. That means that people like me, who don’t have the inclination to research all this for themselves, can pick out the juiciest and most relevant sections to read. Cheers!
Just a quick point on this posting though: I’m a British citizen and a lifelong user of the NHS. Nobody in this country is fooled into thinking that the NHS is even close to being perfect, and concerns over its budget, seeming declining standards etc. feature regularly in the news. Certainly, it has its issues and our Prime Minister has recently called for a shake-up (he hasn’t been the first).
We may not be as wealthy as our cousins across the Atlantic, but we are not an impoverished people – we wouldn’t be resorting to witch doctors and folk medicine if it weren’t for the NHS. If we think something is below the standard it should be for a country of our status and wealth, we kick up a fuss. But few of our 60m residents have felt the need to go to private care. (I think about 12.5m, but I Googled those statistics…) If you asked the nation what we thought of our National Health Service, the resounding cry would be: “It’s alright.”
The story reported by the Telegraph is horrible, but I’ve never heard of an instance like that before. I’m sure some horror stories could quite easily be dug up on private healthcare services here and in the US. And the statistic at the end doesn’t necessarily carry much weight: How many mothers (particularly first-time mothers) could be described as worried and concerned during labour? Being left alone at a point when they are worried does not equate to being left alone at a critical point when they really should have somebody present. I’ve heard plenty of birth stories (too many), but never anything about the standard of care being poor. I think similar statistics could be replicated in plenty of countries.
I can’t comment on Obamacare, because I know very little about it. It may not be the best thing for your country. But we saw the NHS’s name being dragged through the mud in the US media when Obamacare first being discussed, and it did create a kind of backlash: the British public knew it wasn’t being fairly portrayed.
So there you have it. The NHS: not great, not awful, but good enough. And value for money, too.
LikeLike
The “one in five” citation about being left alone… I can only IMAGINE what that number is for women who give birth in the US. As a US citizen married to a brit, I’ve thoroughly researched both birth systems and although it means giving birth away from my mother, sister and without my close friends to relate to during the pregnancy- I am still choosing to move to the UK and give birth in a foreign country. IF the USA had a system that was truly equivalent to the UK I would not feel the need to move.
Before you make any assumptions… I am employed, tax paying and born in the USA…
LikeLike
Do you think, though, that your personal experience and personal decisions are as weighty as the statistics and evidence that I cited?
And how about more evidence?
https://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2009/08/03/must-read-how-does-health-care-in-the-usa-compare-with-other-countries/
LikeLike