The UK’s Mail Online News is reporting that Bed shortage forces 4,000 mothers to give birth in lifts, offices and hospital toilets:
Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.
The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets – even a caravan – went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.
Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.
This is what happens when you put the healthcare system solely in the hands of a government.
I think Neal Boortz said it best this morning in a blog about Union Healthcare:
In order to receive health care someone has to provide you with a service. This means that someone has to expend time, property or both to provide you with your health care. Usually this health care provider is compensated for their time or property. But … if, as this footstool Gettelfinger says … healthcare is a “right,” then that would mean that you are legally entitled to the healthcare provider’s time and property .. and that you don’t have to pay anything at all for the service? After all, we shouldn’t have to buy what is rightfully ours, should we?
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Exactly.ÂÂ
That comment by Boortz perfectly explains why socialism doesn’t work. The idea that one has “the right” to receive the work, time, and/or property from another person is utter nonsense. Well, let’s put it this way – in the long run, such a system simply WILL NOT work.
A few years ago, a friend of mine provided what I think is a great illustration:
Say 10 people are stranded on a island…and they know that they are going to be stuck there. So, they try to start their own little civilization. They divide the work that has to be done to survive into say 10 categories or jobs: gathering food/hunting, building shelter, making clothes, etc., etc.
What happens if at some point one or more of the people are not able to perform, or “underperform,” their task…for whatever reason (physical impairment, laziness, etc.)? Well, if it’s really only 10 people, and say they are friends/family, sure, the other people might pitch in extra to help the “underperformers” get by…
BUT what if the group  is 100 people who didn’t know each other at all before being stranded? or 1000 people?
Most of the people MAY be willing to take up the slack for a FEW “underperformers”…however, this situation quickly snowballs in two ways.
First, as the “underperformers” are “given” what they need, with little or nothing in return, SOME people will realize that there is little or no need for them to work as hard, if at all, because other people will pick up the slack…so, the number of “underperformers” is going to increase.
Second (and similar to the first), as the “performers” see an increasing portion of their work product going  to more and more “underperformers,” at some point, they are going to refuse to have their work product go to the “underperformers” and/or work less (or not at all) – thus they too become “underpeformers.”
NOTE that I am NOT saying all people on some sort of wellfare are lazy or something.
What I am saying is that such a system is doomed for failure. In the long run, MOST people will only work when they are rewarded for it. Likewise, those who are provided for by others will not work because there is no need for them to work.
I realize my example is quite simplified…and I know what I’m saying sounds cruel…but that’s just the way it is.
It’s just human nature…and even Dr. Manhattan can’t change human nature.
Am I going to hell?
man, great comment.. i would write more, but i have the flu today so i am just going to sit around and try not to type too much…
you may go to hell, but it’s all good because many of us may be joining you so we can continue the discussion there…