By Laurie Garrett
FP, April 24, 2018
On April 23, the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to her third child in a posh London maternity center called the Lindo Wing inside St. Maryās Hospital, where a small army of attendants looked after her and Prince William for 24 hours in a secluded, luxurious room at a cost of $8,900, according to the Economist.
Most Western Europeans and Canadians, of course, donāt deliver babies in the Lindo Wing. Otherwise, however, their treatment and outcomes are pretty much consistent with the royal coupleās. Parents pay nothing for their maternity care and delivery, with low risks of maternal and infant mortality.
The average American woman gives birth in a noisy hospital with few frills or amenities and for an average cost of $12,290. Everything is quite average, in terms of quality and aesthetics in the birthing environment, except, on a worldwide scale, the costs. Should she require a cesarean section (an average of $16,907) or any emergency services, her bill could swiftly soar above $30,000. Have premature triplets and costs top $870,000.
According to the National Academy of Medicine, the United States lags far behind the rest of the OECD for a long list of health problems, including maternal and infant mortality. In the OECD, only Turkey and Mexico had higher infant mortality rates than Mississippi, and the state with the best infant mortality in the United States ā New Hampshire ā would still rank way down at 28 in OECD stature.
One study found that Americans used health care services at about the same rate as Europeans ā perhaps even less ā yet paid nearly twice as much for just about everything.
Today, tens of thousands of Americans are crowdfunding their health care, searching for help to offset the costs that their insurance companies refuse to cover. It has come to this. America is a nation of beggars, forced to seek the pity of strangers who may, in turn, choose who shall live based on charity and who shall die for lack of financial support. A blonde 2-year-old girl in a ballerina tutu may garner more such kindness than a black 10-year-old boy in a Black Panther suit, who in turn gleans greater compassion from the online masses than a 50-year-old gunshot victim or an elderly Latina dying from diabetes. Itās like a macabre version of the 1950s TV show Queen for a Day, in which needy women pleaded for a fridge, dishwasher, new flatware, or a smart set of work clothes and an āapplause-o-meterā was used to measure studio audience choices.
In a sensible health care system, there are no applause-o-meters; insurance actually covers patientsā costs; drugs and medicines are purchased in volume to bring down those prices; and life expectancy is independent of personal income.
https://foreignpolicy.com…
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
Fortunately most Americans are not dependent on crowdfunding or on Queen for a Day applause-o-meters to pay for health care, but in some ways these are symbolic of the humiliating dysfunctions inherent in our health care financing system. We should be ashamed that we spend twice the average of other nations on health care and yet leave tens of millions to suffer from financial hardship when they need health care, while not getting the results that we should be.
We already are spending enough money to provide health care for everyone, but we need to spend it more wisely. Through a well designed single-payer, improved Medicare for all, cost-sharing financial barriers could be essentially eliminated for everyone as they are in many other nations that spend much less.
Should we reprise the applause-o-meter to award that cute 2-year-old blond in a ballerina tutu the title of Princess for a Day in order to help pay at least some of the costs of her cancer care? Then what about the elderly Latina with late stage diabetes whose applause meter score did not qualify her as Queen for a Day, and who also failed to gain sympathy on a crowdfunding webpage?
This is America. We can do far better than that.
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