“$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.”
? Frank Oski, MD, Professor and Director, Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
When I read this quote I was thrilled to see that there was someone on the inside who agreed with what I knew about birth and healthcare reform. ?Jennifer Block wrote a great piece for Rh Reality Check entitled Where’s the Birth Plan? She makes many valid points, but none as striking as this:
“Childbirth, in fact, costs the United States more in hospital charges than any other health condition — $86 billion in 2006, almost half paid for by taxpayers. This high price tag — twice as high as what most European countries spend — buys us one of the most medicalized maternity care systems in the industrialized world. Yet we have among the worst outcomes: high rates of preterm birth, infant mortality, and maternal mortality, with huge disparities by race.”
What is our problem? ?Seriously why can’t we get our act together? ?We overprovide care to so many women in the childbearing experience, which jacks up the price and risk. ?Even if we let every woman choose her own provider, birth setting and the like, including epidurals and cesareans on demand, VBACs and homebirth with midwives – we’d be much better off than we are today when it comes to both maternal and infant outcomes as well as cost.
The Big Push for Midwives campaign did an economic analysis. Did you know that if just 10% of women had planned out of hospital births with a midwife, we’d save more than $9 billion dollars? ?That’s a lot of healthcare money…
So while everyone else is arguing about the end of life care, I’d like to see us shift the topic to the beginning of life care. ?It only makes practical and economic sense. ?Your thoughts?
I totally agree with you! It’s sad though that the AMA and ACOG have their grubby little hands in health care reform b/c they are the ones that are going to put up giant roadblocks to demedicalizing childbirth. With both organizations taking solid anti-homebirth positions, it’s going to be hard getting the changes we need. I’m hoping The Big Push makes some serious headway, but at this point I’m not too optimistic.
We are way behind, I agree, but we have to start anyway! With the co-incidence of health care reform on the table, the Big Push activism, and ACOG saying obstetrics is going in the wrong direction, this could be a tipping point moment! If WE don’t believe in it, why should anyone else?
Having had a primary c/s, and then a VBAC. I am so worried about what might happen if the health care bill is passed.
there is so much talk about preventative medicine and what not, that I am afraid doctors will want to force even more c/s to prevent the unknown.