President Obama promises that once the nation's wobbly economy gainssome strength, he'll propose a comprehensive plan to deliver qualityhealth care at more affordable costs.
Actually, at least onemodel of this kind of care is as old as the hills. It's calledmidwifery, pronounced mid-WIFF-ery in English. The word refers to helpfrom trained nurse-midwives for women giving birth.
Early onin the eastern mountain states - where many families could not afford,or even find, doctors - midwives were called "granny women." And in1923, a sophisticated, well-educated woman got on a horse and rode deepinto those hills in the coal country of Kentucky, surveying the needfor obstetrical care and training women in modern midwifery.
Mary Breckinridge, who was the granddaughter of a U.S. vice presidentand the daughter of the nation's ambassador to Russia, had learnednursing in England. The Frontier Nursing Service that she set up inthe poorest county in that state is still in business.
Sincebirthing is an age-old, natural process, midwives assist but do notmanage labor with anesthesia. If any sort of trouble is anticipated,midwives work in tandem with physicians from the hospitals and clinicsthat are spread thinly throughout the remote hillsides.
In fact, in1923, Mary Breckinridge rounded up the money to establish afull-service hospital in the tiny town of Hyden, Kentucky - population200! Over time, the little building became a school of midwifery andfamily nursing. And a new, bigger hospital opened in town in 1975. Itis named, quite naturally, Mary Breckinridge Hospital.