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from the think-of-the-children's...-mother dept.
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The US has a shameful record when it comes to caring for its moms. As Ars has reported before, the rate of women dying during pregnancy or childbirth is higher—much higher—than in any other developed country. By some estimates, mothers die in the US at a rate six-times that seen in Italy and three-times the rate in the UK, for instance. And of those that survive, tens of thousands suffer devastating injuries and near-death experiences each year.
Nevertheless, health researchers, hospital organizations, policy makers, and state task forces have been working to understand and reverse the horrific numbers—often doing so with limited resources and reliance on volunteers. While reports have offered glimpses of the problem, a new investigation by USA Today provides one of the sharpest pictures yet.
Many of the pregnant women and mothers who suffer and die in this country do so from easily preventable, common complications—and hospitals know exactly what safety features and practices are needed to spare mothers' lives and suffering, they just aren't using them. Women are left to bleed to death because doctors don't bother monitoring blood loss. Women suffer strokes and seizures and even die because doctors and nurses fail to treat their high blood pressure in time. The bottom line is stunning, simple negligence.
[...] While high blood pressure is one of the top causes of maternal deaths and complications, experts estimate that up to 60 percent of hypertensive deaths are preventable.
Hemorrhaging is another common but easily treatable complication. Women can bleed to death in as little as five minutes during childbirth. Yet experts estimate that 90 percent of maternal deaths from extreme blood loss are preventable. Such strategies to avoid harms are simple things, like weighing bloody pads to monitor blood loss (not relying on inaccurate visual estimates), having medications and supplies to curb blood loss readily available in a mobile cart, and responding promptly to signs of trouble.
Such simple steps have been recommended by experts for years. But in interviews with USA Today, many hospitals admitted they weren't following guidelines.
To put the data in real terms, USA Todaytold the story of 24-year-old Ali Lowry, who bled internally for hours after delivering by Cesarean section in an Ohio hospital in 2013. Her blood pressure registered at alarmingly low levels—52/26, 57/25, 56/24, 59/27—for more than three hours before staff responded. By the time she was airlifted to another hospital for life-saving surgery, her heart had stopped and she needed a hysterectomy. She eventually settled a lawsuit with her doctor and the hospital, which denied wrongdoing.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 03 2018, @12:24PM (10 children)
This makes a lot of sense, and if I were king of the U.S. of A. I'd be instituting "Medicare for all" but trying to drive it toward the cash-only level of paperwork. Shopping doctors makes sense. Basic affordable healthcare makes sense. If you want the latest in joint replacements, advanced cancer treatments, heart transplants, etc. - get yourself into the insurance game, but for basic healthcare there should be a simpler way.
I did an ER visit in Dusseldorf in 1990 with blood poisoning starting in the left hand. It was the most efficient medical experience I've ever had, and mostly because the money side of the equation was trivialized. There was a 35 marks (about US$20) cash charge for the visit which included 1 hour's attention of an MD and nurse, a cast, a tetanus series, antibiotics, etc. Sure, it cost far more to deliver the care than that, that's what the taxes are paying for: to keep the hospital open and the people on staff, the trivial cash charge for usage is similar to office visit copays when you have insurance in the US.
I did a very similar visit to an ER in Florida in 2010, and it was the fiasco you would imagine if you've ever been to a U.S. E.R. - 6 hours in total, 5 minutes with the doc, 30 minutes with the billing officer, 4 trumped up pre-doc visit tests that told him nothing of value, but ran up the bill to the insurance, $200 out of my pocket, something like $6000 on the initial bill to insurance - god knows how that shook out after negotiation, probably something like $400 from the insurance company to the hospital in the end, but now we've got integrated insurer/provider companies who are starting to book those big bills as if they are actually getting paid. It's time to start dragging the heads of these institutions into the streets and showing them the guillotine.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @02:10PM (9 children)
Why does it have to be Medicare? Let communities (including groups spread out across different governmental jurisdictions) form their own damn groups with their own damn definitions of obligation.
The problem with the U.S. is that the government has made health care into a political creature, and the lawyers treat health care as a big cash cow for their litigious nature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @02:23PM (8 children)
Medicare has first mover advantage.
Surely a capitalist would understand first mover advantage!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @02:28PM (7 children)
That's it. The only "advantage" is that Medicare can use the men with guns to extract money from you.
That's sounds totally un-American, and it's certainly anti-Capitalist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @04:16PM (1 child)
You have no idea what first mover advantage is or why it's relevant here, do you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @04:39PM
First mover advantage. Just ask Friendster about it.
That's why we're all Egyptian.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @06:48PM (4 children)
No, the "advantage" of Medicare is that it pools risk. With everyone in one pool, the average cost per person goes down, because the risk is spread across the entire population, it ends some types of rent seeking, and because there is only one "plan." True, some people will pay more, but we are already subsidizing people's healthcare, so that is a super small percentage (i.e. less than 5%). Multiple studies, even by Libertarian and right-wing groups show that Medicare for All would be less expensive, etc. because it is more efficient, among other benefits. This is even when you add it as an additional option for buy in. There is a reason why almost everyone who is eligible signs up for Part B, C, and D, and doesn't get private insurance, despite being available.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @06:53PM (1 child)
You prove it by competing in the market place. May the best pool win.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @03:27AM
I would if I could, but the law won't allow them to do so. But as I said, in the demographics where enrolling in Medicare is allowed, they routinely stomp the competition in terms of sign-ups.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @07:21PM (1 child)
Yes, that's a good point. I saw a couple hilarious (or at least I try to laugh here because otherwise I will be consumed by despair) pieces on Common Dreams and Alternet reporting this. Here's one: Reporting on Bernie Sanders' Medicare for All Plan Makes the Media Forget How Math Works [alternet.org] [FAIR].
My point about first mover was that medicare is a well-understood program. None of the private insurance providers have anywhere near the experience working with populations near or below the poverty line or experience with the level of governmental oversight we'd expect out of single payer healthcare that medicare does. Additionally, many social workers (for example, people at HHS offices and people who are involved in charity programs currently run by hospitals and community foundations--they pretty much all know each other in any given community too, that is, the professional networks are established and close-knit) have a lot of institutional knowledge about medicare.
Medicare for all is a no-brainer if there ever was one.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @04:06AM
Sadly the no-brainers still find it perplexing.