Friday, August 31, 2012

The War on Women, British Version


During the opening ceremonies of the London Olympics we watched an absurd, choreographed paean to the greatness of the Britain’s National Health Service.

Undoubtedly, Paul Krugman thrilled to the spectacle.

Hadn’t the famed monomaniac told us that all is well with the NHS?

In Krugman’s now-famous words:

In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.

Democrats want the upcoming election to hinge on the cost of Sandra Fluke’s birth control pills. In Britain the government-run NHS has just issued guidelines for childbirth designed to lower the cost of childbirth.

The Daily Mail reports today:

Family doctors are being told to try to talk women out of having Caesareans and very strong painkillers during birth to save the NHS money.

New guidelines drawn up for GPs urge them to encourage women to have natural labours with as little medical help as possible.

But for many women the prospect of giving birth without the painkillers is unthinkable.

And critics have said the move has been made without any thought for the women themselves.

The guidelines also remind doctors to tell women to consider having their babies outside hospital in midwife-run units or in their own homes.

Caesareans cost the NHS around £1,200 a time while epidurals – anaesthetic injections into the spine – are around £200.

The guidelines state that, as well as being expensive, they both slow down a mother’s recovery after labour and impede breastfeeding.

The advice does not suggest women should not be given any painkillers, such as gas and air which are commonly used.

However, it specifically tells doctors to try to reduce the numbers given epidurals and other anaesthetic injections into the spine.

The advice – drawn up by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives and the National Childbirth Trust – has enraged campaigners and some senior doctors.

NHS decisions are made by an advisory board, not by women themselves.

If the term “war on women” means anything, we see it in action in the new NHS policies on childbirth.

3 comments:

  1. " The advice – drawn up by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Royal College of Midwives and the National Childbirth Trust – has enraged campaigners and some senior doctors.

    NHS decisions are made by an advisory board, not by women themselves.

    If the term “war on women” means anything, we see it in action in the new NHS policies on childbirth."

    A-Yup.

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  2. The problem is not the advice - it's good advice. I've had 5 children born in the NHS and the risks were skewed towards over-medicalization, including epidurals and caesarians. The problem is not that the government takes decisions on how to spend tax-payers money. One problem is that my money is confiscated to be re-distributed in the medical industry according to the priorities of those who didn't earn it. Another problem is the perverse incentives created by the ocean of other peoples' money; instead of a direct commercial/medical/human relationship between me and my doctor, there's weird bureaucratic relationship with risks and rewards distributed according to absurdist rules. The ultimate problem is that citizens outsource responsibility for their own health - they are infantilized.

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  3. Who uses the healthcare system the most? Women and those who are starting to mature. If one is going to cut costs it almost certainly will come from these two groups. There will be nice sounding justifications, but it will be these two groups who will suffer the most because some government board 2000 miles away will determine the medicare that one has a right to receive.
    How do I know such things one might ask? Well my son in law spent twenty years in the military as a Ranger, Pathfinder and jumping out of perfectly good airplanes and helicopters defending this country and as happens ruining his knees. The battle with Tricare to at the least give him a few hours without pain was not what one thinks that a grateful country would expect. I won't even get into how the government healthcare system is treating his wife, my daughter, who of course helped to make his service to this country possible.
    If this was a singular occurrence one might forgive what appears to be a SNAFU, but it is not.The closer it gets to the end of the fiscal year the worse it gets.
    If a country treats its military veterans and their families this way one can imagine that others might fare far worse.

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