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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Helpless beside her, her overnight bag in his hand, her poor husband looked equally traumatised.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“Brits love <\/em>the NHS”<\/p>\n
I longed to sit with this poor young woman, calm her and remind her gently to breathe deeply through each contraction.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“Here, look at this poll, helpfuly provided to me by a pro-public option group!”<\/p>\n
Ten hours later, after she had been drugged to the eyeballs to dull the pain, I heard she’d given birth.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“PUBLIC OPTION NOW!\u00a0 PUBLIC OPTION NOW! PUBLIC OPTION NOW!”<\/p>\n
Her baby was healthy, but I knew I’d let her down.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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.\u00a0 15 years ago, there were 35,000 midwives in Brit materinity wards.\u00a0 Today, there are 25,000 – half of ’em part-timers.<\/p>\n