The Left tells us that if we just submit to government medicine and allowed the entire medical industry to become socialist, everything will be okay.
Meanwhile, as The Guardian reports, the reality is somewhat different:
More than 500 mothers and babies came to harm or died as a result of inadequate care in Nottingham, an inquiry into the NHS's biggest ever maternity scandal has revealed.
A total of 444 women and 76 newborn babies suffered "potentially avoidable" outcomes because they received substandard treatment over 13 years from Nottingham University hospitals NHS trust (NUH), a damning report led by the childbirth expert Donna Ockenden has found.
The report itself pulls no punches: It says it demonstrates what happens when "poor practice is not investigated; learning is not integrated; and mothers and babies are failed by an organisation they should be able to rely upon absolutely during a period of acute vulnerability in their lives."
(But I was told government-run medicine is a paragon of accountability and oversight!)
Among the findings of the review:
Women and families "repeatedly described feeling unheard, inadequately informed and unsupported when expressing anxiety, particularly in relation to reduced fetal movements, emerging medical complications, and complex decision-making."
During labor, mothers reported "inadequate training, management and oversight" along with "a toxic bullying culture" among medical staff.
Of the more than 20 maternal deaths surveyed over the time period, over 25% of them were linked to potential "failures in care," including a failure to listen to mothers as well as a failure to adhere to "robust clinical governance."
The report found "prolonged periods of maternity leadership instability" that contributed to "significant operational consequences, affecting day-to-day decision-making, staff wellbeing and professional practice."
The investigation was launched by the stillborn death of baby Harriet Hawkins, whose parents " were repeatedly prevented from receiving the essential care they needed" during a difficult labor.
The Guardian reports that other concerns included "repeated failures to monitor babies properly during labour ... not recognising when babies were in distress, and midwives not escalating worrying cases urgently to doctors."
Horrifyingly, the report found that "one baby girl who died early in gestation was 'inadvertently disposed of as clinical waste by laboratory staff after her postmortem examination'."
The Guardian further points out that this is neither a new nor an isolated phenomenon:
While Wednesday's report is a scathing indictment of poor maternity care over many years at NUH, it follows previous reports into similar failures at three other NHS trusts in England in recent years: Morecambe Bay, East Kent and Shrewsbury and Telford.
Ministers and NHS leaders admit that multiple recommendations from those and other inquiries to improve care have not been implemented and that major problems persist.
I'm thinking maybe government-run healthcare isn't all it's cracked up to be.
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