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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: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 03 2018, @03:17PM (29 children)
Experiment: Go in with insurance and pay for a tetanus shot for one of your children. Then go in and pay for the same treatment for your other child with cash at the exact same facility. I guarantee you the two bills won't look remotely similar and I'll buy you a beer if the cash bill comes to more than what the insurance company statement reads. That's not a bet, by the way. I'll buy you a beer either way for opening your mind up and testing your assumptions.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @04:19PM (27 children)
I've tried this before with labwork. The cash cost is always around an order of magnitude higher.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @05:13PM (26 children)
Yup, insurance can collectively bargain for cheaper prices and hospital administrators realized they can charge the people who pay directly any amount they want. It is almost guaranteed to be more expensive to fight the charges than to just pay up.
Uzzy do YOU get it yet? The "free market" is not actually quite so free and often you get price gauging because the average Joe rarely has the time to research everything and price collusion is certainly something that has happened before, is happening now, and will continue to happen as long as a business is unethical and thinks they can pull it off. Most government regulations are there to protect the people, the insurance/billing is the REAL problem adding a shit ton of overhead with the bean counters.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @05:49PM (13 children)
Governmental regulation makes such competition unlikely.
I'll take Freedom over your Paternalism, thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @06:33PM (12 children)
Take a look around you. Everything you see is contoured by the elite who own 80% of everything, and your "competition" concept is laughably naive. Git educated son.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @06:56PM (11 children)
The point is to have a culture and a legal framework in place that allows for at least the possibility of competition.
Under such a system, it doesn't matter if control over society's resources collects under a few elite; those few will have proven themselves good stewards of society's resources. The same can never be said of an organization that commandeers stewardship at the point of a gun.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @07:47PM
Ah, so then we can have a one world government that is proven to generate philosopher-kings. Perhaps even kings with healing hands who are angelic in nature! These wise angels governing over us would also gladly allow alternatives to flourish, and it would never occur to their pure hearts to use anti-competitive tactics to shut down competition.
It's almost as though somebody has already analyzed this argument before.... It's like something that came up a few episodes ago on the hit Netflix series SoylentNews: Of Men and Angels.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @09:41PM (9 children)
That is what we have now genius. Technically if you can secure the funding you are able to create just about any business you'd like. You're 100% free to do so, just find the $millions to even get on the same level as your competition. Sadly this system also allows for the shady few assholes to corner markets and do lots of shady shit to make you go under. That is the result of your "possibility of competition". Technically it is true, but in reality that competition you so value becomes collusion and pseudo-monopolies.
The only real way for the average person to compete is to create tax payer funded alternatives, this lets them cut out the rent-seeking profiteering behavior and create more efficient services. However people such as yourself cry foul and support the corrupt POSSIBILITY of competition system we have now. You're so naive it hurts replying to you.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:20AM (8 children)
You have an extremely limited mind.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @04:09AM (3 children)
Or you suck at reading comprehension. Possibly you just glazed over everything else until you saw something you could criticize. My money is on you being too dumb to understand the reality unfolding around you.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @04:24AM (2 children)
Nah, see I have this thing called an "imagination" that I can use to come up with new ideas completely out of the blue. I know it hurts when you first start using your brain but it does get easier after a little bit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:55AM (1 child)
Maybe it hurt you, that first bout of usage must have created some serious damage that never fully healed.
#reeeeeeeetard
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @09:48PM
That's some weak shit even by your normal can't-troll-your-way-out-of-a-paper-bag standard. Practice more.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @04:18AM (3 children)
We're waiting for you to propose an alternative that is not tax funded and does not suffer from the inherent contradictions of capitalism.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @04:21AM (2 children)
Sorry, until I see some individual thought from you lot, I'm not pitching in to help on something that isn't my problem. Help yourselves or you get no help from me.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @05:57AM (1 child)
Can we just settle for no help from you? Safer that way >:D
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @09:49PM
Nice one. +1 for you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday August 03 2018, @06:40PM (5 children)
Additionally, many medical problems need to be treated *immediately*. You don't have time to "shop around", presuming you are sufficiently mobile to do so. When an ambulance delivers you somewhere, you can't change your mind and ask to be delivered somewhere else. (And an ambulance ride across the street can run $2000. One hospital I know put in an overhead corridor over a street, with all the costs and paperwork that involves, to save itself the cost of having an ambulance take people from their ward to the XRay center.)
Some of this is regulations. Some is insurance companies. Some is lawyers. Some is "other unreasonable charges". You can't point to any one place and be either right or wrong. When being discharged from the hospital my wife was always required to wait for a wheelchair to carry her down to the street, even though she was being discharged as fully mobile. (This wasn't always true, but she could walk a mile on a flat surface, and all the hospital corridors were flat.) Well, this was handled by volunteers, so there was no expense, but the requirement was there to protect the hospital. (That said, it was often a good idea, as when she left the hospital she always tired easily. Lying in bed for a week does that to you.)
Other people have had other experiences, but my experiences say that shopping for medical assistance is often impossible. You've got to take what is immediately presented. Later in the process you may be able to transfer to another facility. Now this is clearly a different circumstance than surgeries that can be done "when convenient", but I've had many more experiences with "care is needed NOW!!!" than with "do it when it's convenient"....outside of scheduled doctor visits.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @06:58PM (1 child)
The Free Market is NOT about immediate results; it's about iteration; it's about evolution by variation and selection.
People talk about their experiences, and thereby shape other people's future decisions.
People pay insurance companies to do that research for them in advance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @07:18PM
No, YOURS is a tired line of reasoning. Like these base principles will magically work out with complex human behaviors and artificial constructs such as labor and service markets.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 03 2018, @10:16PM
The Free Market is NOT about immediate results; it's about iteration; it's about evolution by variation and selection.
People talk about their experiences, and thereby shape other people's future decisions.
People pay insurance companies to do that research for them in advance.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:27AM
The Free Market is NOT about immediate results; it's about iteration; it's about evolution by variation and selection.
People talk about their experiences, and thereby shape other people's future decisions.
People pay insurance companies to do that research for them in advance.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @03:28PM
The Free Market is NOT about immediate results; it's about iteration; it's about evolution by variation and selection.
People talk about their experiences, and thereby shape other people's future decisions.
People pay insurance companies to do that research for them in advance.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 04 2018, @06:48AM
Clearly different AC here. One who actually works in the healthcare industry.
That collective bargaining isn't free for the healthcare providers to endure.
In addition to delaying payment for services rendered, said bargaining and extra work to otherwise get payment ties up enough staff to create dedicated departments. An appalling amount of resources are spent fighting insurance to actually pay for things. That being said, Insurance refusing tests isn't entirely uncalled for as there are plenty of opportunistic doctors who will take advantage of the system any way they can. Without some insurance pushback, insurance would function like a lever a provider could pull and it puts cash in their pocket.
What would be less expensive than funding entire departments? People walking in with cash. My particular area of the country(US) is full of 501c3 healthcare entities. Cash payment is around 40-45% of the official stated cost for SOME service lines and Lab isn't necessarily one of them. Lab involves a tremendous amount of manual work, specialized analyzers, and consumables.
Lab work, in a general case, isn't particularly simple. There is neither a single analyzer one can throw samples into and just get results or a magic stain one can apply under a microscope. Assuming that whatever lab you went to can even do the necessary test so it isn't sent somewhere else, you still have to fund an enormous staff and pay for all those FDA regulated reagents/consumables. Imagine having to constantly buy HP printer ink to run your business but you absolutely have to buy your "ink" from Siemens or GE Healthcare. Lives are at stake; as are lawsuits.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Saturday August 04 2018, @01:34PM (4 children)
A group here started publishing actual going rates for medical services so patients would know that the $25k service they were just billed for is normally $2.5k. (Using numbers from an actual bill of mine)
The state house leapt into action to fix this obvious problem!
They banned informing consumers about the customary pricing. Hurts profitability and the negotiating power of insurance companies dontcha know...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 04 2018, @09:53PM (3 children)
Nice. I think you know the solution to that particular problem though. When your employee (state rep) is fucking shit up instead of doing their job, you fire them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 05 2018, @01:51AM (2 children)
I've held that position for a long long time. Trouble is, they get to keep their jobs too long. What think ye if we voted much more often. Maybe even a running tally of approval and at some reasonable sampling period we oust them. Cut way down on the waste of campaigning- if we don't like you, you're gone quick, before you do much more damage. Just like real employment.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 05 2018, @02:44AM (1 child)
Just be more literal. Use real fire.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 05 2018, @03:12AM
Great idea, but be careful, golem wood fires rage.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 03 2018, @05:45PM
Yeah, sorry, direct experience here. Some years ago I had a tiny problem that needed a CT scan, no insurance. They billed me for $2,800 for just the CT. I won't go into the rest. I did research and found Medicare would pay $600 for that exact same CT. Insurance companies use Medicare "Codes" and payments for reference. The rest, cash patients, pay "suggest retail price".
It's much like auto parts- you'll go to a 3rd-party shop, they'll put in whatever part they feel like, and you'll pay dealer list price, even if the shop paid 1/20 for the part, and it's legal in USA. (one of the main reasons I do most if not all my own work).
I don't drink much, but a Bitcoin would be an acceptable substitute.