The UK Healthcare System

I wasn't surprised by this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,588573,00.html

Woman Gives Birth 3 Hours After Doctors Tell Her She's Pregnant

Tuesday, March 09, 2010
A British woman became a mother for the first time just three hours after doctors discovered she was pregnant, The Sun reported Tuesday.

Belinda Waite, 21, had been in and out of hospital for nine months after being told she was suffering from a severe case of irritable bowel syndrome and gout.

It was only after she was admitted to hospital in severe pain on Feb. 6 that doctors realized she was expecting.

They told Waite she was around three months pregnant and sent her back home to Bampton, Devon in the U.K., just before midnight.

But a few hours later, baby Louise arrived weighing a healthy 8 pounds, 14 ounces to the amazement of Waite and her boyfriend, Wayne Boyles.

"I did feel like something was moving inside me as the months went on," Waite said. "But I never considered I was pregnant — and it doesn't seem to have crossed the doctors' minds."

I should have been because I'm an American, but I wasn't.

Considering my experiences with the UK system when I lived there I'm not surprised at all that they couldn't figure out the 21 year old woman was pregnant. 

After all when you go in to the doctor's office in the UK they don't even take your blood pressure, temperature, listen to your heart, or weigh you.  All of which are standard in the US.

I mean it seriously took her going into labor (which by the way they couldn't even figure out that she was in labor) for them to say hey I think you're pregnant.  And then they didn't even check to see how far along she was. 

They told her she was only 3 months pregnant then sent her back home.

While she was in active labor.

Really?!

Really.

They wouldn't have sent her back home in the States.

Back home they would have conducted an ultra sound to see how far along she was. 

At the very least.

Hell back home it wouldn't have taken the doctors 9 months to figure out she was pregnant.  One of the most common questions I'm asked when I go to the doctor in the States is "Are you or could you be Pregnant?". 

And my GYN does a pregnancy test as a matter of course at every visit just to make sure I'm not.

This is what Obama wants to turn our healthcare system into.  A bunch of incompetent people who stand around and scratch their heads and say hmmm...based on the fact I've done absolutely nothing to diagnose you I'd say you have gout (yes she was diagnosed with IBS and Gout not pregnancy).

When you have the government involved it turns the whole thing into crap because really what do politicians know about health?  Really what do they know about anything?

Lawyers, politicians, insurance companies - STAY OUT of my healthcare!