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.