Reasons For The High Cost Of Healthcare: Money, And The Big Business Of Being Born

[PoliTalker]

Dr. Marsden Wagner was the former Director Of Women's and Children's Health for the World Health Organization.

He wrote an eye-opening book which explains a significant part of why health care costs so much in America. The reason: Medical interventionism with birth care.

His book, Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First First
is a no-holds-barred critical review of how we do birth in the USA, what the problems are, why they hurt us, and how we could do much better.

He doesn't even go into the fact that the for-profit birth industry in the USA is costing us huge amounts of money and the costs are spread out to everybody, not just mothers, because of our for-profit insurance industry. That's why we should all care about this subject, whether we know somebody who is pregnant/trying; or not.

His focus is mostly on the mothers and babies, and how we are not treating them as well as we could.

Here's the problem. ACOG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the very powerful lobbying arm of OB-GYNs, sees midwifery as competition, and has quite successfully suppressed America from even considering a completely natural birth.

Most people think when you're pregnant you have to go to the hospital. This is not true. Pregnant women are pregnant; not sick. The hospital is a place that sick and injured people go for treatment. It is not really the best place to have a baby. It's too expensive, and they have a tendency to use unnecessary medical interventions to induce birth and hurry it along mass production style. Get 'em in and get 'em out and keep that hospital bed turnover rate high for the highest profits.

This does not always produce the best outcome. It is the highest cost method to have a birth, and it is usually not necessary. Most women don't realize they have other options because OB-GYNs won't tell them, and they acquire women as patients long before they get pregnant. So when women do get pregnant, they are already on a track to the highest cost birth experience but not always the safest.

We should use Midwives as the primary provider for birth care in the 70-80% of low-risk pregnancies, and rely on OB-GYNs (high paid surgeons) for the 20-30% of high risk cases and in case of complications. Midwifery Birth Centers should be located in or near hospitals. Being nearby (within 20 minutes) is just as safe as being in the hospital because it takes 20 minutes to prep an OR in the case of a needed emergency C-Section.

Midwives are trained in natural childbirth and know when there is a problem. Amazingly, OB-GYNs are NOT trained in natural childbirth. They are trained in medical intervention birth. The first thing they are going to do is hook up the pregnant woman to a bunch of probes and monitors, and have her stuck in bed in one position. Midwives can and will encourage the woman to get up and walk around naturally as needed and continue having a comfortable life until the moment is at hand. And they are trained to wait for the baby to come naturally, something high dollar surgeons and for-profit hospitals don't always have time for.

But because of ACOG, Midwifery has been made out to be 'unconventional,' and it is shunned by the very people birthing-age women go to for advice. This is wrong, and it costs us all lots of money. A powerful big money industry has been built on this ruse.



The Business Of Being Born