The Preemie Problem
Michael Moore drags out the left’s favorite sawhorse—that the United States ranks 37th in quality of healthcare as tabulated by the UN. One of the reasons for this, which will undoubtedly be pointed out by Mikey, is our awful infant mortality rate, which is tied with Malta and Slovenia. This, clearly, is an indictment of our evil for-profit capitalist healthcare system right? That’s the point Mike will make. So, let’s get to the truth, so that you can explain Mike’s bullshit to all your left-wing friends after they see the movie. Let’s look at this article in that notorious right-wing Bush-worshipping magazine Slate. (All emphasis added.)
Infant deaths in poor nations are roughly six times more common than in developed areas and result mainly from easily treated infections like diarrhea in the first few months. By contrast, the majority of deaths in developed countries result from extreme prematurity or birth defects that kill a newborn in the first few days or weeks of life. According to a 2002 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least a third of all infant mortality in the United States arises from complications of prematurity; other studies assert the figure is closer to half. Thus—at the risk of oversimplifying—infant mortality in the United States principally is a problem of premature birth, which today complicates just over one in 10 pregnancies.
Hear that? The problem isn’t that the babies which are being born are dying at a higher rate, it’s that we give birth to more premature babies, and therein lies the problem.
To reduce infant mortality, then, we need to prevent premature births, and if that fails, improve care of premature babies once born. (Prematurity is also linked to other problems; for example, it’s the leading cause of mental retardation and cerebral palsy in children.) But modern medicine isn’t good at preventing prematurity—just the opposite. Better and more affordable medical care actually has worsened the rate of prematurity, and likely the rate of infant mortality, by making fertility treatment widespread. According to a 2006 Institute of Medicine report, the numbers of women using assistive reproductive technology doubled from 1996 to 2002. At least half of their pregnancies culminated in multiple births (twins or more), which are at high risk of premature delivery.
Get that, Mikey? It is because of our wealth and affluence that women are able to wait until their careers are established to start a family. This increases the chances that the baby will be born prematurely. Modern medical science, as the article says, just “isn’t good at preventing prematurity.”
I could quote the entire article, but you should read it yourself. The problem isn’t that we don’t spend enough money on premature babies, it’s that we spend too much.
Comments
Note that other countries count infant mortality using different standards than we do. In some developed countries if a baby is born premature and dies within so many days they don’t include that death in their statistics. We do.
So typical of Moore to present selective data to make a case. This is either a case of gross ignorance or deliberate misinformation. Take your pick.
You guys really make me laugh.. you pretend to be on some holy crusade against misinformation, yet none of you have seen the film you’re criticizing, and you blindly trust the research (and interpretation of that research) provided by other media outlets instead of doing the research yourself and then forming your own conclusion. As a result, all you’re doing is parroting someone else’s one-sided opinion, as opposed to providing everyone with the “big picture”, like you think you are. As a result, this site is really just a bunch of thinly-veiled partisan bigotry.
Of course, since nobody here is bright enough to understand how sites like this one only help the person they seek to “expose” (by giving him/her free publicity), I doubt any of you are going to agree with anything I’ve said.. so with that, I’ll let you get back to cut/pasting links to other people’s opinions and, of course, thinking up creative names for everybody who disagrees with you.
Yawn. How many comments you think this one will make before he gets frustrated with everyone not agreeing with him and goes back to DU to baw?
I just love how dipshits believe that when you criticize someone, you’re giving them free publicity.
What I love is people like deepb who feel the need to come on this site accuse us of being thinly-veiled partisan bigots while they demonstrate their own thinly-veiled partisan bigotry since it never occurs to them that Moore himself is full of thinly-veiled partisan bigotry. Let’s see if deepb sticks around. Being the bigoted ignoramus I am, I have a couple of questions he/she might answer.
My father is a doctor and he has always told me that no matter what level of income the parents have, if a baby is born prematurely and needs medical attention they get it - even if the hospital has to spend a couple million to keep the baby alive for a bit. My father says that the baby in most cases still dies but they do all they can. Some how I doubt that Cuba has the technology or the man power to keep a premature baby alive, if even for a little while. So the problem is obviously not that the babies here don’t get care based on insurance or income - in fact they get better care than in Cuba for sure. The problem is that we have a higher rate of premature births.
deepb,
In my holy crusade against misinformation, I noticed where Michael Moore was quoted in Variety magazine as follows:
“They (insurance companies) get in the way of taking care of those who are ill.”
“The poorest Brit is healthier and lives longer than the wealthiest American,” he said.
Now, I don’t doubt for a second that first statement in a given percentage of cases. However, Moore’s not helping me much here because, as usual, the king of one-line negative comments about the U.S. healthcare system isn’t actually telling me anything. What percentage of cases do insurance companies “get in the way” of taking care of those who are ill?
But, the second one-liner is typical Moore where he delivers little nuggets of bullshit like a dung beetle on a downhill roll. Is he even remotely aware that some smokers and overweight people in the UK are denied medical services because of limited resources? Is that “getting in the way” of taking care of those who are ill?
What am I suppose to think about Moore’s little ball of dung when I know the average life expectancy of UK males is only 2 years more than American males? For women it’s only 1 year. Could there be other reasons for this other than it being a health care issue?
What does Moore say about the fact that over 40% of the deaths in this country are due to smoking, poor diet and physical inactivity, alcohol and illegal drug use, sexual behaviors, toxic agents, firearms, and automobile accidents. What’s the impact universal health care going to have almost half the deaths in this country? Since I know the UK has a much lower rate of death from automobile accidents and firearms, why do I need to get all upset about an average life expectancy of only 18 months less than the UK, which, by the way, is a whopping 2% difference?
The point is this . . . Moore cannot offer the WHO life expectancy tables, and nothing else, as support for universal health care. It just doesn’t fly. There are differences in culture, lifestyle, etc. that have effects on life expectancy.
Moreover, according to WHO, a standard list for ranking leading causes of death worldwide does not exist. Funny, but they published data about a decade ago showing the UK had higher rates of death from heart disease, stomach cancer, breast cancer, and liver disease . . . some of the leading causes of death. How can anyone think WHO can rate anything comparing apples and oranges from various countries?
As usual, Moore supporters aren’t asking the right questions. Hell, they aren’t asking ANY questions. They just hear his one-line analysis of the state of our health care system and flip the switch to their brains to off.
Posted by deepb on 05/24 at 09:03 PM
So let me get this straight.. you don’t actually have you own opinion on this issue, nor have you done any of your own research. It’s also pretty obvious that you don’t even know for sure whether Moore mentions infant mortality in his new film, and finally- for all you know, the author of the Slate article could be manipulating facts in the same way you claim Moore does..
So putting the minor details aside, it’s clear that you either don’t have any children or your children are already through college- or else you wouldn’t be defending US health care as it relates to child birth. Do yourself a favor and go find a graph of the number of c-sections performed each year for the past 20-30 years. Then find another graph showing the number of times each year that labor was induced. Given the high frequency of both of those, especially recently, you might be saying, “yeah, so what?”. Well, to explain the negative aspects of either of those would take more typing than I’m willing to do in a message board comment, but I would suggest picking up a book on the subject (very eye-opening information).
Anyway.. so why the sharp increases? Well, malpractice is a big part of it, but once you really understand what goes on in a hospital during child birth (when compared with the ideal scenario), you won’t go to a traditional hospital to have your baby delivered. Just go ask a midwife how business has been lately, if you can actually catch up with her in-between work.
I won’t even touch on autism, because I don’t believe it’s directly linked to any of this (right now), but there’s another graph showing a steady year-over-year rise in the US.
So let me get THIS straight. First you criticize Lee for reading and citing a Slate article because he “didn’t do his own research”. Then you just basically tell us to go find graphs of this, that, and the other thing, imply we will find something meaningful, decline to say what it is, then tell us to go read a book and talk to a midwife. Lee at least linked and quoted something! You didn’t reference a graph, source of graphs, or even a book you recommend. How good do you think your argument really was?
Now lets see you address why the US is number 37 in quality of healthcare overall...not just the infant mortality statistics…
Let’s see you address how the WHO came up with that ranking.
Responsiveness
Fairness of financial contribution
Overall Level of Health (Life expectancy)
Distribution of Health in the Populations
When you use the term “quality” of healthcare you imply competence, or the lack thereof. In the catagory of Responsiveness, the United States, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Canada, Norway, Netherlands and Sweden lead the pack. (The UK was down the list which Moore will never mention.)
The reason we are 37th is mainly due to the fact our costs are higher than other countries. After all, Cuba only spends 253 bucks a person for healthcare. Wanna try that here?
<Ahem>…
[mooreon]
Haha! PWNT!!!
[/mooreon]
Sorry, just wanted to see how the other half thinks.
(or, doesn’t.)
Good health care aggravates the rate of premature births, but it is not the primary cause. Any obstetrician will tell you the biggest risk factors for premature birth are hypertension and diabetes, and these conditions certainly are not rare in the United States.
Age plays a role, as you pointed out, but not just in older women. The US has higher rates of teen pregnancy than most other industrialized countries as well. (That’s not just a problem with health care, but with a lot of factors like education, poverty, access to birth control, etc.)
Woops, just a correction: the rate of teen pregnancy is not higher than “most other industrialized countries,” it’s higher than all other developed coutnries.
chuckg,
I have a few problems with some of your hypothesis;
First, in that because the highest infant mortality rates were among African Americans and Native Americans, that this must somehow be connected to poverty.
Did the information you reviewed specifically say that the mortality rate was higher among lower-income black families, or just black families? To automatically make this connection seems… I don’t know… almost racist, to me.
Yes, yes, I know. There’s good reason to make this connection without evidence. African Americans are more likely to live beolow poverty level. Native Americans even moreso. So that leap isn’t all that big, sure.
But if you’re going to travel that path, then wouldn’t you also be forced to consider other contributing factors to infant mortality rates that are considerably more prevelent in Native American and African American families than they are elsewhere? (Besides poverty)?
IV drug use, for example? Or alcoholism? Or crack cocaine dependency? Or violent spousal abuse? Or malnutrition? Or any of a host of other factors besides lack of health insurance that would contribute so much more to infant mortality, and are found in much higher numbers among
these minority groups?
I’m just saying, if you’re going to use increased infant mortality rates among these minorities as proof that it’s a result of a capitalist health care industry being harmful, then you should be prepared to factor in all the relevent data, including that which hurts your theory.
Did the information you reviewed specifically say that the mortality rate was higher among lower-income black families, or just black families? To automatically make this connection seems… I don’t know… almost racist, to me.
*gasp* A leftist using the assumption that black people must be poor and in need of help to try and win an argument? NO.
I have a slight problem with the Slate article being used without making it clear that it is an opinion and that the author does state that it is only a “possibility”.
Comparing infant mortality rates between countries is fraught with uncertainty —after all, it’s hard to argue that every country’s figures are reliable. But it’s still worth asking what more we can do to stop babies from dying. Defined as death before one year of age, infant mortality frequently gets framed in the United States as a problem of insufficient health-care funding. In December, for example, a New York Times column blamed it on the lack of a single-payer health insurer. However, a closer look reveals the counterintuitive possibility that high infant mortality in the United States might be the unintended side effect of increased spending on medical care.”
Its an opinion that is worth debate, and the author ‘might’ be right. But it is still hypothesis rather than evidence-based fact and the question still remains WHY are so many premature babies not surviving and what improvements in healthcare can reduce the fataility figures.
Michael Moore may or may not debate this in his documentary, it will be interesting to see.
But if you’re going to travel that path, then wouldn’t you also be forced to consider other contributing factors to infant mortality rates that are considerably more prevelent in Native American and African American families than they are elsewhere? (Besides poverty)?
IV drug use, for example? Or alcoholism? Or crack cocaine dependency? Or violent spousal abuse? Or malnutrition? Or any of a host of other factors besides lack of health insurance that would contribute so much more to infant mortality, and are found in much higher numbers among
these minority groups?
Or indeed the questions with regard to drug use could be asked with regard to all Americans as, according to the Drug Policy Alliance, “drug use is more or less consistent across racial lines”.
http://www.drugpolicy.org/communities/race
Despite the fact that drug use is more or less consistent across racial lines, many punitive drug laws are based on beliefs that certain communities of color commonly abuse certain substances. Due to the racial injustices caused by the drug war, supporting drug policy reform can help end racial inequality. Drug Policy Alliance is drawing attention to these disproportionate impacts of the drug war and working to end the war on people of color.
On a cursory search that does seem to be corroborated, certainly by Human Rights Watch.
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2000/06/08/usdom595.htm
The U.S. war on drugs has been waged overwhelmingly against black Americans, Human Rights Watch charged in a new report released today. The report, “Punishment and Prejudice: Racial Disparities in the War on Drugs,” includes the first state-by-state analysis of the role of race and drugs in prison admissions. All of the 37 states Human Rights Watch studied send black drug offenders to prison at far higher rates than whites.
Apologies, I didn’t include the text from the Human Rights Watch comments on the report that shows that black Americans do not use more drugs than white:
(http://hrw.org/english/docs/2000/06/08/usdom595.htm )
“Most drug offenders are white. Five times as many whites use drugs as blacks,” said Jamie Fellner, Human Rights Watch associate counsel and author of the report. “But blacks comprise the great majority of drug offenders sent to prison. The solution to this racial inequity is not to incarcerate more whites, but to reduce the use of prison for low-level drug offenders and to increase the availability of substance abuse treatment.”
According to the CDC press release earlier this month black Americans have a far higher rate of infant mortality, or at least they did in 2004, therefore I assume the drug factor can be safely removed from the equation:
http://www.cdc.gov/od/oc/media/pressrel/2007/r070502.htm
Non-Hispanic black women had the highest infant mortality rate in the United States in 2004 – 13.60 per 1,000 live births compared to 5.66 per 1,000 births among non-Hispanic white women. Women of Cuban ethnicity in the United States had the lowest infant mortality rate – 4.55 per 1,000 live births.
I would assume Michael Moore will have researched the facts with regard to alternative possibilities as far as possible before coming to his conclusions, we shall see.
Another matter that may have been reasearched during the making of the film was that of the same discrimination evidenced against black Americans in the war against drugs emerging in the health system and so contributing to the poor US health care record.
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=8338 (date 2005)
Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said this week that over 80,000 black Americans die every year because of disparities in health care. Despite government and public and insurance companies knowledge of this shortchange in health care for blacks, they have done little to improve the situation.
That does rather imply that there IS a major problem with health care. Perhaps Michael Moore is on the right track?
.
All interesting stuff, and of course Michael Moore has had a lot longer than the hour or so I have just spent to research the possible ‘other causes’ before coming to his own conclusions re healthcare. Hopefully the film will accurately portray the situation as a result even if no positive action to redress the problems is taken will at least be food for thought.
Have a good weekend all.
Before I leave for the weekend, the author of the Slate article quoted could possibly have missed a vital point and be slightly off-track in her analysis.
( http://www.slate.com/id/2161899?nav=tap3 )
Her opinion appears to be that
1. “infant mortality in the United States principally is a problem of premature birth, which today complicates just over one in 10 pregnancies.”, (although it should be noted that she also states, “According to a 2002 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least a third of all infant mortality in the United States arises from complications of prematurity; other studies assert the figure is closer to half.”
and neither “a third” or “nearer a half” really imply the term “principally")
2. “To reduce infant mortality, then, we need to prevent premature births, and if that fails, improve care of premature babies once born.”
3. “...high infant mortality in the United States might be the unintended side effect of increased spending on medical care.”
Given the larger number of infant mortalities in black Americans and the statement by the Surgeon General that 80,000 black deaths are due to disparities in health care, in could be argued that infant mortality may have little to do with increased spending by the health industry other than it not reaching black Americans.
I’ll be on my way now. If anyone wishes to pull me up on any of the above with counter-evidence, hopefully with courtesy and civility, I won’t back online until Tuesday.
Take care all.
Posted by Pete on 05/26 at 12:32 PM
Another matter that may have been reasearched during the making of the film was that of the same discrimination evidenced against black Americans in the war against drugs emerging in the health system and so contributing to the poor US health care record.
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=8338 (date 2005)Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said this week that over 80,000 black Americans die every year because of disparities in health care. Despite government and public and insurance companies knowledge of this shortchange in health care for blacks, they have done little to improve the situation.
That does rather imply that there IS a major problem with health care. Perhaps Michael Moore is on the right track?
Hi Pete,
Something didn’t feel right about that article. I’m not criticizing you; I think you quoted and interpreted the article at face value. But 80,000 excees deaths among blacks due to inferior health care just didn’t feel right. And so I looked up mortality/morbidity statistics from the CDC.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr54/nvsr54_19.pdf
According to the table on Page 11 (of 50), there were a total of 291,300 deaths of blacks in 2003, and a preliminary count of 284,877 such deaths in 2004. The 80,000 alleged deaths of blacks per year due to disparities in health care would then account for between 1/4 and 1/3 of all deaths among blacks. That doesn’t seem right to me. Does it to anybody else? Any human-originated cause would almost have to go out of it’s way to be responsible for 1/4 of all deaths of any population.
Upon reading the article you cited more closely, it seems the opening paragraph, which you quoted, doesn’t mesh with later details, either. The opening paragraph cites over 80,000 excess deaths due to “disparities in health care”, but the next paragraph implies that the 80,000+ excess deaths are due to all causes. Here are the two paragraphs together:
Former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said this week that over 80,000 black Americans die every year because of disparities in health care. Despite government and public and insurance companies knowledge of this shortchange in health care for blacks, they have done little to improve the situation.
An examination of U.S. mortality rates for blacks and whites between 1960 and 2000 and found that 40.5 percent more blacks died each year than whites. That, says Satcher adds up to 83,570 deaths a year.
The way I read that second paragraph implies that the deaths are due to all causes. If the studied deaths were due solely to inadequate health care, that qualifier should have been included in the second paragraph as well. Maybe it just wasn’t written correctly, but combined with the CDC data, I’m very skeptical that this article is accurate.
Posted by Pete on 05/26 at 01:46 PM
Before I leave for the weekend, the author of the Slate article quoted could possibly have missed a vital point and be slightly off-track in her analysis.
( http://www.slate.com/id/2161899?nav=tap3 )
Her opinion appears to be that
1. “infant mortality in the United States principally is a problem of premature birth, which today complicates just over one in 10 pregnancies.“, (although it should be noted that she also states, “According to a 2002 analysis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least a third of all infant mortality in the United States arises from complications of prematurity; other studies assert the figure is closer to half.”
and neither “a third” or “nearer a half” really imply the term “principally")
I’ll disagree with you here. When there are more than two causes of death, I interpret the term “principally” to mean the plurality cause, which need not be the majority cause.
2. “To reduce infant mortality, then, we need to prevent premature births, and if that fails, improve care of premature babies once born.”
3. “...high infant mortality in the United States might be the unintended side effect of increased spending on medical care.”
Given the larger number of infant mortalities in black Americans and the statement by the Surgeon General that 80,000 black deaths are due to disparities in health care, in could be argued that infant mortality may have little to do with increased spending by the health industry other than it not reaching black Americans.
Again, I’m skeptical of that 80,000 number. I’m not saying health care is equal between whites and minorities, but that number seems extraordinarily high. However, in the same CDC report that I cited previously, the table on Page 21 does indeed show that blacks have double the total infant mortality rate, and account for about 30% of all infant deaths. That does show a disparity, in my opinion.
I’ll be on my way now. If anyone wishes to pull me up on any of the above with counter-evidence, hopefully with courtesy and civility, I won’t back online until Tuesday.
I wish you had presumed courtesy and civility instead of requesting it. For the most part, people here return to new members a similar tone to what’s offered. I noticed you just recently registered, and this is the only thread in which you’ve posted. If you’ve seen a lot of hostile replies to other newbies, it’s probably because most of them came here with hostilities of their own.
That does rather imply that there IS a major problem with health care.
Interesting posts Pete. Before any productive discussion of this issue can take place, everyone involved needs to realize that no one (by which I mean everyone except some guy in a shack writing books about how the Apollo program was a hoax)takes the position that there is not a major problem with health care in America. The point in question is what should be done, not whether something should be done.
Sethery,
What the FORMER Surgeon General did was take death rates, not total deaths. And he did this for the period 1960 to 2000.
If you look at the 2004 CDC data the total deaths of blacks as a percentage of the total number of deaths is just over 12%. Since blacks make up just over 12% of our total population, the good doctor has some explaining to do.
If 80,000 fewer blacks had died in 2004, the total deaths of blacks as a percentage of the total number of deaths would have dropped to only 8.6%. Since blacks would still be 12% of our total population would liberal think that fair?
And what would that do to the death rate for blacks? It would drop it from 1027.3 (per 100,000) to 741.3 . . . while the white death rate would remain at 786.3.
All this is for 2004.
So, why the higher death rate for blacks when the total number of deaths seem to be distributed proportionally among the total population? Is it solely a healthcare issue?
Go back to my first post on this thread. Using selective data you can come to any conclusion you want. For example, in 2003 the death rate in the UK was 1021 per 100,000 compared to our death rate of 844 (world fact book) or 832 (CDC), take your pick. The fact that the UK’s death rate is 21% higher than ours is alarming. This proves universal healthcare is inferior to our present system . . . case closed. Or I could say since the death rate for blacks in the US is virtually the same as the death rate for all Brits, then why does Michael Moore want to change our system?
Or could I say that since the Gaza Strip had only 403 deaths per 100,000, the healthcare systems in France, the UK, the US, Canada and elsewhere suck.
The above logic has the same fatal flaw Moore’s little nugget about the UK had. It’s almost impossible to compare different cultures fairly. The WHO recognizes this, even if Michael Moore doesn’t. That’s why they are working to make a standard for reporting data, at least in some areas.
And the good doctor is also making a fatal flaw implying that the difference in death rates between blacks and whites in this country is solely a health care issue. There are other factors.
The most important questions about infant mortality is not being asked.
1) How many infants die within 24 hours of birth in the U.S.?
2) How many infants born in the US weigh less than a 1000 grams?
Without having those number you cannot compare our infant mortality rates with those of many other nations.
Five times as many whites use drugs as blacks.
According to the CDC press release earlier this month black Americans have a far higher rate of infant mortality, or at least they did in 2004, therefore I assume the drug factor can be safely removed from the equation
Why is that first statement so shocking? After all, there are over 7 times as many whites as blacks in this country.
If that statement is true, what does that tell you about the rate of drug use for the white and black populations here?
If that statement is true, what does that tell you about the CDC mortality rates between whites and blacks in this country?
Given that statement may be false, what does the CDC say about drug use as a cause of death among various populations in the U.S.?
Sethery, I’m back for a few hours due to bad weather, so a quick reply now. Thank you for your courtesy and nonconfrontation attitude shown in your reply and I respect that we all can translate different figures in different ways (so long, of course, that we don’t diverse completely from fact to imaginative guesswork). :)
Vermin, thank you for your post - although I don’t quite understand what the relevance to the issue in hand would be of a guy in a shack writing Apollo hoaxes, but no doubt you had some link in mind.
Buzz, I’m taking this opportunity (coming back to await a lull in the current storm) to get some rest before returning to sea and so will comment on your posts on Tuesday or Wednesday when I return.
although I don’t quite understand what the relevance to the issue in hand would be of a guy in a shack writing Apollo hoaxes
I thought it was a fairly transparent analogy. I was qualifying my statement that NO ONE believes that there is not a problem with US health care by conceding that regardless of how irrational a belief is, some percentage of the population inevitably holds it. Somewhere some guy in a shack probably believes there is nothing wrong with US health care. The point is, that is not my position, nor is it the position of anyone else I know.
I don’t know if anyone will actually read this--- I didn’t see this discussion until today.
I live in Memphis, and this is a major problem here. While I wouldn’t say lack of access to medical care is the sole factor, it’s big enough that only a fool would ignore it.
As of 2005, Memphis had the highest infant mortality rate among the 60 largest cities in the US. On average, a baby dies here every 43 hours.
One ZIP code in particular, 38108, has a higher per capita infant mortality rate than much of the third world. A trip down to 38108 will quickly dispel the notion that the higher IM rate has something to do with “career women” waiting until later in life to reproduce. Just the opposite, in fact. The women in these areas give birth very young. They’re poor, and as anyone who’s ever tried to plan meals on a very low budget can attest, fat is cheaper than food with no nutritional value, so they’re not eating right. They’re not taking any vitamins.
They may or may not have reliable transportation to go in for much in the way of medical care at all--- Hospitals don’t build clinics in these neighborhoods.
It is in our best interest--- Not only morally, but financially--- To provide better access to medical care for these women. The average “healthy baby” is delivered for $2000. The average “preemie” can spend up to a month in the hospital and cost in excess of $75,000. With the bulk of these preemie deliveries taking place in families that couldn’t afford the $2G, let alone the $75G, my city and my state end up way out of pocket on this problem.
I don’t have the numbers nationwide, but locally, 60% of infant mortality is caused by premature birth.
And in case you haven’t guessed it yet--- The neighborhoods affected are mostly black. The infant mortality rate among blacks in the city is almost 20 in 1000 live births. Among whites, it’s 6.7 in 1000.
Despite the ridiculous article put up by Slate (Despite what you think, far too scattershot to have much political ideology at all, and more often than not, vomiting up whatever pablum they believe will get them some attention for taking a view no one else does), infant mortality is not caused by career women having babies at 35 any more than it’s aggravated by better access to medicine. It’s got the same old root causes it’s always had. Poverty, a lack of education, and a lack of access to prenatal and postnatal care.
I would recommend that anyone who wants a gritty, realistic look at this problem check out Aimee Edmonson’s award-winning series of articles on the high infant mortality rate.
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So let me get this straight.. you don’t actually have you own opinion on this issue, nor have you done any of your own research. It’s also pretty obvious that you don’t even know for sure whether Moore mentions infant mortality in his new film, and finally- for all you know, the author of the Slate article could be manipulating facts in the same way you claim Moore does..
So putting the minor details aside, it’s clear that you either don’t have any children or your children are already through college- or else you wouldn’t be defending US health care as it relates to child birth. Do yourself a favor and go find a graph of the number of c-sections performed each year for the past 20-30 years. Then find another graph showing the number of times each year that labor was induced. Given the high frequency of both of those, especially recently, you might be saying, “yeah, so what?”. Well, to explain the negative aspects of either of those would take more typing than I’m willing to do in a message board comment, but I would suggest picking up a book on the subject (very eye-opening information).
Anyway.. so why the sharp increases? Well, malpractice is a big part of it, but once you really understand what goes on in a hospital during child birth (when compared with the ideal scenario), you won’t go to a traditional hospital to have your baby delivered. Just go ask a midwife how business has been lately, if you can actually catch up with her in-between work.
I won’t even touch on autism, because I don’t believe it’s directly linked to any of this (right now), but there’s another graph showing a steady year-over-year rise in the US.
You wonder why the press doesn’t take you seriously? You don’t even make an attempt to hide the fact that you simply dislike Moore, and will disagree with anything and everything he does, regardless of whether you’ve actually researched it, care about it, etc.