Babykilling.

In the UK, NHS chief Dr. Austin has this to say regarding premies:

The legal limit for abortion is 24 weeks. Dr Austin said that the care given to such tiny infants should be weighed up in the same way as the NHS decides whether or not to fund treatment for dying cancer patients.

‘If it was my child, from all the evidence and information that I know, I would not resuscitate,’ she said.

‘We are doing more harm than good by resuscitating 23-weekers. I can’t think of very many interventions that have such poor outcomes.

‘For me the big issue is that we’re spending an awful lot of money on treatments that have very marginal benefit.

‘I would prefer to free up that money to spend on providing support to people who have much more lifelong chronic conditions.’

Dr Austin, who did her medical training in New Zealand, does not work on a neonatal unit but acts as a consultant for the West Midlands Specialised Commissioning team, advising what treatments and care should be funded in the region.

She said the issue should be looked at ‘in the same way as we’ve made hard decisions about things like cancer drugs, saying the outcomes just aren’t good enough and therefore we won’t use them’.

She added: ‘There’s a lot of emphasis on the parents’ views and what they want. But somewhere in there, there needs to be an advocate for the baby.

‘I would say it’s unique in terms of a no-go area. If I came out and said, “I’m going to stop resuscitating babies below 24 weeks”, there would be a witch hunt.’

Read the rest here. 

But hey, Obamacare is modeled to work just as well as other countries with socialized medicine.

So what are the alternatives for a woman who has a pregnancy with the threat of premature delivery? A progesterone shot that, given weekly at the cost of only about $10, can in some cases reduce the chance of premature delivery.

Sounds good, right? Well, this week in Atlanta the Obama administration gave approval to allow only one company the right to produce the drug. Cease and desist orders under threat of lawsuit have been sent out to other manufactures and the cost for a single shot will skyrocket to $1,500 per weekly dose.

But recently, KV Pharmaceutical of suburban St.Louis won government approval to exclusively sell the drug, known as Makena (Mah-KEE'-Nah). The March of Dimes and many obstetricians supported that because it means quality will be more consistent and it will be easier to get.

None of them anticipated the dramatic price hike, though - especially since most of the cost for development and research was shouldered by others in the past.

"That's a huge increase for something that can't be costing them that much to make. For crying out loud, this is about making money," said Dr. Roger Snow, deputy medical director for Massachusetts' Medicaid program.

"I've never seen anything as outrageous as this," said Dr. Arnold Cohen, an obstetrician at Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia.

"I'm breathless," said Dr. Joanne Armstrong, the head of women's health for Aetna, the Hartford-based national health insurer.

Doctors say the price hike may deter low-income women from getting the drug, leading to more premature births. And it will certainly be a huge financial burden for health insurance companies and government programs that have been paying for it.

Read the rest here.

So let me get this straight... Poor people who cannot afford this preventative measure and will therefore have premies that socialist medicine doesn't want to intervene that much for due to cost and so will die.

Those who can afford it (ie socialist elite) can pay those costs for their babies.

Margaret Sanger would be proud.


An aside: Remember Virginia Ironsides from a few posts back? She's come up with a really cost-effective treatment:



Pillow therapy.