Here Is Your Public Option

posted at 7:18 am on December 16, 2009 by Mitch Berg
[ Healthcare ]   

A midwife in a Brit maternity ward writes about a typical day under Britain’s National Health System – the one that Americans continue to insist is fine, Winston, just fine.

Clutching her husband’s hand and with agony and exhaustion etched on her face, a young woman struggled into a room in the maternity unit where I worked.

She was in the early stages of labour with her first baby, she was terrified, in excruciating pain and desperate for any crumb of support.

Helpless beside her, her overnight bag in his hand, her poor husband looked equally traumatised.

My heart went out to them. But I knew there was little I could do. With five other pregnant women to care for at the same time, all with hugely different and complex problems, I was rushed off my feet and didn’t have the time to look after her properly, to allay her fears or to hear about how she wanted the birth to unfold.

“Brits love the NHS”

I longed to sit with this poor young woman, calm her and remind her gently to breathe deeply through each contraction.

Just half an hour of my time could have made all the difference. Instead, I put on my cheeriest smile and followed hospital procedure. ‘Would you like a painkiller?’ I asked.

“Here, look at this poll, helpfuly provided to me by a pro-public option group!”

Ten hours later, after she had been drugged to the eyeballs to dull the pain, I heard she’d given birth.

“PUBLIC OPTION NOW!  PUBLIC OPTION NOW! PUBLIC OPTION NOW!”

Her baby was healthy, but I knew I’d let her down.

The piece also goes into detail on the erosion in numbers of providers – doctors, nurses, midwives and the like – that is inevitable under socialized healthcare.  15 years ago, there were 35,000 midwives in Brit materinity wards.  Today, there are 25,000 – half of ‘em part-timers.

Read the whole thing.

And then call your legislator and remind them that if they want this kind of healthcare so bad, they should lead the way by having it themselves.

Cross-posted at Shot In The Dark.

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