The 47 million number is crap. I've detailed this at least three times. The number of "insured" has nothing to do with actual access to serious health care, and this is recognized even by many liberals who have been trying to steer the conversation to "preventative" care.

Now, the numbers:

If you correct for population difference, 4,000 such births in Britain in a year would be about 20,000 in the U.S. Hold that number in your head.

In 2006, 38,568 women gave birth outside of hospitals in the U.S. For most of them, this was by choice, giving birth at home attended by midwives or doctors, or in a birth center. If you do the math in the article, you end up with 4,238 women giving birth at home unattended by professionals, and about 2,700 women who gave birth someplace else entirely.

Even granting the supposition that unattended home births and the rest were all involuntary, from people who would have preferred a hospital or professionally-attended birth and could not get access to the service, the total for 2006 was 6,938.

Any questions?

By the way, the main point was that the news story was about something happening in a nation with a supposedly better health care system than we have.

Sit down and think real hard about your Shuttle example. You really want the kind of thinking and cost-effectiveness that takes place at NASA, the Department of Education, or the DoD in control of the health care system?