Socialist America?

Bigredmed
Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:45:53 +0000

Now consider Japan( yes it is a first world country): A woman going into labor went to ten hospitals for delivery, only to find that the doctors are on strike due to poor pays by their version of Medicare. The result? the baby dies within the woman.



Can you cite a source for this story? There’s got to be more to the story…that doesn’t even represent basic understanding of labor progression…

While it’s certainly true that there are complications of labor that can, without proper interventions result in fetal demise, simply taking a long time to find a physician (or nurse, or midwife) is not sufficient to have that result. Further, if true there are grave ethical considerations that I believe would take much higher precedence in what went wrong than merely a physician strike or the impact of socialized medicine.

FURTHER, a similar situation is NOT going to happen in the US anyways. For one, as I found out in my time abroad this past year, most foreign countries have decent rates of physician unionization…something which is fairly nonexistant in the US. The AMA is the largest physician group and only about 25% of doctors are members…and it’s not a union by any stretch. Second, there are federal laws in place already in this country which require ER’s to treat/stabilize patients regardless of ability to pay…and childbirth isn’t stabilized until that baby is out. Third, this is one case where the propensity towards legal action in this country would be a positive. Merely practicing “CYA” medicine would result in that baby being born…