Health Care and Infant Mortality: The Real Story

[MrsSmith]

Health Care and Infant Mortality: The Real Story

by Steve Chapman

The American medical system has the latest technology, the greatest variety of new drugs and unparalleled resources. But anyone who thinks we're getting something great for our dollars inevitably encounters a two-word rebuke: infant mortality.

The United States is the richest nation on Earth, but it comes in 29th in the world in survival rates among babies. This mediocre ranking is supposed to make an irrefutable case for health care reform.

...

Like life expectancy (the subject of a previous column), infant mortality is a function of many factors. The more you look at the problem, the less it seems to be correctable by a big new federal role in medical insurance -- and, in fact, the less it seems to be mainly a medical issue at all.

No one denies the problem. Our infant mortality rate is double that of Japan or Sweden. But we live different lives, on average, than people in those places. We suffer more obesity (about 10 times as much as the Japanese), and we have more births to teenagers (seven times more than the Swedes). Nearly 40 percent of American babies are born to unwed mothers.

Factors like these are linked to low birth weight in babies

...

African-American babies are far more likely to die than white ones, which is often taken as evidence that poverty and lack of health insurance are to blame. That's entirely plausible until you notice another racial/ethnic gap: Hispanics of Mexican or Central or South American ancestry not only do consistently better than blacks on infant mortality, they do better than whites. Social disadvantage doesn't explain very much.

Nor does access to prenatal care, as the health care critique implies.

...

When New York expanded access to prenatal care under Medicaid, the effort reduced the rate of low birth weight infants by just 1 percent. In Tennessee, after a similar effort, researchers found "no concomitant improvements in use of early prenatal care, birth weight or neonatal mortality."

So why does our infant mortality rate exceed that of, say, Canada, where health care is free at the point of service? One reason is that we have a lot more tiny newborns. But underweight babies don't fare worse here than in Canada -- quite the contrary. The NBER paper points out that among the smallest infants, survival rates are better on this side of the border.

What that suggests is that if we lived under the Canadian health care system, we would not have a lower rate of infant mortality. We would have a higher one.

...

Maybe the libs really want healthcare reform to reduce the population.  They sure don't mind killing unborn infants, so making sure expensive preemies don't live may be a plus in their "minds."

[debk]

Anybody giving any examples of how many children are born drug addicted or have fetal alcohol syndrome in this country?

How many young girls are too ashamed by their pregnancy to go to a doctor and get prenatal care?

How many illegals are in this country giving birth, never having gone in for prenatal care?

Are they counting miscarriages....that in many countries are just considered to be a late/heavy period...because here the mother goes to the doctor/hospital for follow up care?

[thundley4]

Anybody giving any examples of how many children are born drug addicted or have fetal alcohol syndrome in this country?

How many young girls are too ashamed by their pregnancy to go to a doctor and get prenatal care?

How many illegals are in this country giving birth, never having gone in for prenatal care?

Are they counting miscarriages....that in many countries are just considered to be a late/heavy period...because here the mother goes to the doctor/hospital for follow up care?

From the bold part of the quote, illegals don't seem to contribute to the problem in this case.

Hispanics of Mexican or Central or South American ancestry not only do consistently better than blacks on infant mortality, they do better than whites

It seems to be more a problem with African-Americans. It would be interesting to see a breakdown along economic lines.