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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: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 03 2018, @02:17PM (20 children)
There's some truth to what you say but that doesn't cover the breadth of the problems in the healthcare industry even by half.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 03 2018, @03:05PM (19 children)
Absolutely correct.
I wonder: if the "healthcare system" in the US was pretty much socialist, would it work much better? As it stands, it's a complex web of sharply delineated rules and gotchas significantly more complex than IRS. My cynical view is that govt. divisions keep it going to justify their existence and make their $ and have their little empires of bureaucracy. Meanwhile people lose huge $ and family fortunes because diseases are not treated, they get worse, the people involved suffer, get sicker, eventually die needlessly, yet it still all has to be paid for. How about if the person dies due to ANY thing or person who impedes treatment, you don't get paid? How about the sicker you get due to the system, the less you get paid? How about we (USA) look at countries where the system works and we just do that?
Forgive me, as I've written earlier, my poor mom is very ill so I'm seeing the inefficiency and mess directly. Right now she's in hospital and needs to go directly to SNF. BUT, she also needs a potentially life-saving treatment that's considered "outpatient", so she can't get that AND be "inpatient" in a hospital or SNF. Oh, some, including Medicare, will tell you it can happen, but all hospital and SNF care coordinators / social workers say that someone won't get paid. I've seen them refuse treatment because of it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 03 2018, @03:23PM (7 children)
I'd rather skip the socialist bits. I haven't put a whole lot of thought into the matter but I'm absolutely certain it can be done a hell of a lot more efficiently without government involvement and the always accompanying corruption lending a hand. Pretty much anything can.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 03 2018, @03:47PM (3 children)
As always, I completely agree. The optimist in me thinks somehow good people would run such a progressive system. Trouble is: we're running out of good people.
Maybe that's it: how can we get the system set up and staffed by good people only? No time to think about it...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @05:20PM (2 children)
Damn boi, you just some shill account here to prop up The Might Buzzard's failing ideology? Wonder if he realizes what you're up to or if he thinks you're just a *swell* guy.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:41AM
I told him I'd spring for the hookers at the next SN staff meeting if he agreed with me for a month.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday August 06 2018, @05:16AM
I like TMB's hooker answer better than mine, which is: I'm more open-minded than most people. If there's anything I can't stand it's idiots who are militantly sure of themselves, no matter what it is they believe in. TMB is brilliant and has shared his experiences and how he has been on both sides of most (all?) major issues. He learns. It's called wisdom. Of course, we all have our view from our path in life. I see and understand the strong arguments and positions people have on most major issues. I think any sane rational person would realize there are no simple easy answers to anything in society. And for sure all the overly strong opinions, bickering, fighting, rioting, etc., are not helping solve anything.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @06:07PM
The facts (e.g. statistics from other countries) do not agree with you.
But why let that stop you? You are just here to stir of shit to get more engagement on the site, right?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @08:20PM (1 child)
And yet all the existing better systems have strong government involvement in the form of single payer. In spite of your certainty, no one has hit on the better system without gov involvement, so it's high time you do put a whole lot of thought into the matter and show us the way. Save us TMB, you're our only hope!
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:45AM
Why? My healthcare's free and costs nobody a dime worth of tax money, assuming I'm bothered enough to drive six hundred miles to use it. You have an arguably functional brain, use it. Assume every idea is shit until you find one that you cannot improve upon. Pro-tip: not having to take money from others without their consent is an improvement over having to.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @03:36PM (10 children)
The government isn't to blame for your problems, it is the insurance industry and the for-profit healthcare industry. I realize this goes against the Libertarian fantasy of angelic men and businesses that strictly follow optimal financial processes.
There is no cure for this insanity no matter how many examples of businesses going bad and ripping people off. There is a reason most other western nations have socialized medicine and have better health outcomes.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @04:28PM (8 children)
That's why Socialism always collapses into dysfunctional breadlines and "re-education" gulags.
Capitalism (libertarianism), in contrast, explicitly acknowledges the existence of soulless, self-serving psychopaths who are attracted to the levers and buttons of power. That's why capitalist society's are forever the most prosperous, because people don't trust monolithic organizations.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @05:55PM (3 children)
Your ideology is like the Luminiferous aether, sounds reasonable when you only know a little bit about the world and really stupid once you start understanding reality.
Capitalism sure does acknowledge the existence of socipaths and psychos, the only problem is that it REWARDS them! Do you even reality brah?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:48AM (2 children)
Socialism rewards them more. Or do you not see stealing from people with more than you without feeling guilty as a sociopathic tendency?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:49PM (1 child)
Lol, projection!
Sociopaths have little to no empathy for others.
Let us see, i am suggesting single payer healthcare so no citizrn dies from an esdily treated issue. You are suggesting homeless and poor people should be unable to afford healthcare. In this scenario you are the sociopath no matter how you try and dress it up, you just try and hide behind the stupid phrase "taxation is theft!"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @09:57PM
That's a nice strawman you have there. I haven't suggested anything at all during this discussion. I've just said your favorite idea is shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday August 03 2018, @06:04PM (3 children)
That's probably true except for the "forever" part. One thing that libertarianism fails to acknowledge is finite natural resources.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:49AM (2 children)
You mean like socialism fails to acknowledge finite piles of Other People's Money?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by shortscreen on Saturday August 04 2018, @08:54AM (1 child)
No, I meant like how socialism fails to acknowledge the existence of soulless, self-serving psychopaths who are attracted to the levers and buttons of power.
"Another View of Stalin" which was written by a communist, portrays Stalin as someone who was competent, devoted to the cause, and who ultimately accomplished a lot despite being constantly frustrated by saboteurs, external foes, and political opponents like Trotsky (a sore loser, the Soviet Union's Hillary). But he still got thrown under the bus at the end. So ironically, if you can believe this story it would seem to indicate that the system was pretty fragile and doomed to fail once it lost its great leader. The ambitious types were ready and waiting to take the reins for their own purposes.
Your quip about other people's money must be aimed at a peculiar definition of socialism. Worker control of the means of production doesn't require other people's money.
If you want to talk about growing economic parasites feeding on dwindling supplies of other peoples money, I think you would need to include the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sector, as well as the military-industrial complex and the government generally.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @10:01PM
It really doesn't matter how you portray one of the world's top five murderers in history.
Sure. I have no issue with including them in the discussion. There's plenty of fucked-up-edness all over the place and nobody gets a free pass on scrutiny.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday August 03 2018, @07:16PM
Sorry, but in a way the government is to blame. They set up the system enabling the insurance companies to take over the hospitals, and they manage it in such a was as to ensure that the insurance companies remain in control.
That said, I can't see a workable system that isn't run by government. Somethings really need to be or you suffer horrendous inefficiencies. Few people think a city should contract out it's police and fire fighters. Even fewer think it should be done by neighborhood associations with no governmental oversight. (And the ones who do are generally ideological fools.)
So I think that basic medical support should be run by the government in the same way that streets and other utilities are. And that optional extensions should be private. Just what the division should be is arguable, but definitely anything crucial to life should be part of basic...unless one wants to put an age limit on "when basic services are available". But those are precisely the people that a private system wouldn't want to care for, so that's an argument for "age related euthanasia for being poor". I'm not going to say it's not a valid position to take, but it's not a valid position to take without making your stance public.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.