ORLANDO SENTINEL
Editorial
What are they thinking?
Our position: State senators are making no sense in cutting care for pregnant women.
Posted April 12, 2004
As the state Senate and House go into conference to ruminate on the budget, here’s something they should keep in mind:
One of the dumbest things the Senate did was slash health-insurance coverage for 7,000 low-income pregnant women. That $31 million Medicaid cut is even more foolish than the proposed cut in the youth anti-tobacco program.
Women who lack health insurance during pregnancy are much less likely to go to the obstetrician for check-ups. When they show up at the emergency-room door in labor, it may be too late to save the baby or mother if there is a life-threatening condition such as high blood pressure or infection.
Even those who think adults should be responsible for themselves surely care about the babies. Prenatal care helps to prevent pre-term, low-weight births; among babies born before 32 weeks of pregnancy, one in five will die in the first year of life.
Research indicates prenatal care saves $4 for every $1 spent.
Is the Senate having a collective failure of memory? Do senators want to rewind the clock to 1980, when infant mortality in Florida was twice what it is now?
It took years of effort for Florida to cut its newborn death rate to the national average. In the nineties — when Florida began to get serious about giving low-income women prenatal care — the percentage of births without prenatal care was cut in half.
If statistics make senators’ eyes glaze over, they might do well to think of their proposed cut as an increase in the number of infant-sized coffins. Or an increase in the number of tiny preemies on life support, running up unpaid bills of $300,000 each.
Senators should defer to the House on this — and hope voters forget they ever suggested this cut.
Ā© 2004 Orlando Sentinel Communications