Tag Archives: Budget

Podcasts

Former midwife reveals sorry state of NHS maternity services

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Story here in the UK Daily Mail. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

I started working as a midwife in Basildon in 1995. I left to work as an independent midwife in January last year because I simply could not bear to let any more women down.

During a typical 12-hour shift, I could be the sole midwife in charge of six women in the antenatal ward  –  some in early labour  –  or one of two qualified midwives running a postnatal ward with up to 32 women.

If I was in the delivery unit, I would assist in the births of up to three babies a shift.

Obviously, if there was a crisis during a woman’s labour  –  such as a sudden need for an emergency Caesarean  –  there was always a surgical team on call, and there would be an anaesthetist available to administer epidurals and so on.

But in terms of the normal care through labour, that was all down to the midwives.

Although we were under huge stress even back in 1995, current cutbacks mean fewer and fewer midwives are caring for more and more women.

No wonder new mothers are encouraged to leave hospital just hours after giving birth.

When I started in the mid-Nineties, there were 35,000 midwives working in Britain. A year or two ago, that number had fallen to 25,000, more than half of whom were part-time.

What a mess! Here is my previous story about 4000 NHS patients denied hospital beds to give birth to children.

More NHS horror stories linked here.

Health care podcasts from the libertarian Cato Institute

I listened to these and thought they were filled with interesting details about the effects of Obamacare.

Now may be a good time to call your representatives in Washington and tell them not to pass the health care reform bill.

Podcasts

MUST-LISTEN: Michele Bachmann issues conservative call to action

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Listen to the interview here.

Other media formats with the same interview:

I highly recommend listening to this 30-minute podcast. Very moving. At one point she is almost in tears as she pleads with people to call Washington and tell them not to spend any more taxpayer money. Never heard anything like this before from a legislator in all my life.

News

Obama’s deficit for the last two months exceeds Bush’s entire 2006 deficit

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Story from Gateway Pundit. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

The Obama Administration is already $292 billion in the red this year.
This is more than the national deficit for the entire year of 2006 ($248 billion).
Not good.

President George W. Bush never did this.

Obama tripled the national deficit his first year in office and he’s off to a record-setting start in fiscal year 2010.

During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on 9-11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004 the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005 it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006 the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007 it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth.

Please read my previous post that features two Harvard economics explaining why massive government spending drives unemployment up. You can’t fix an economy with spending. You fix it with tax cuts, especially for businesses who hire people. For example, we could cut the employer portion of payroll taxes completely. (That idea is from a different Harvard economist)

There are people I know who voted for Obama because McCain and Palin would spend more. I asked them to look at voting records and ratings from groups advocating fiscal conservatism, like Citizens Against Government Waste, the American Conservative Union, and the Club For Growth. But they kept talking about Sarah Palin’s wardrobe, because that’s all they saw on MSNBC.