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medpundit |
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Friday, February 27, 2004You are so right about infant mortality rates. I sit on my county's fetal infant mortality review board. In Mich. any fetus born with a heart beat is a "live birth" I doubt that any other country counts a 15 week fetus as a live birth. And: You didn't mention the other probable big factor in why our infant mortality is higher. The socialized medicine countries probably lie on their reporting, especially the French. More: I looked into this several years ago and contributing to our "high" rate were women immigrating from the third world, i.e. Mexico, Haiti, at full term with no prenatal care so their babies would be born American citizens. For example some hospitals near the Mexican border have Obstetric Intensive Care units for women presenting in labor. Moreover there are also high rates on Indian Reservations and in inner cities, particularly from drug addicted moms. And the Indian Reservations have the National Health Service. Go figure. And the other side: Come on people--way to defensive and to much trying to explain away--you would think there is a vast left wing conspiracy to distort the infant mortality data--or an international socialist plot to embarrass the United States--a few observations if not facts: 1)We have a high infant mortality rate in relation to other industrialized countries; 2) Other industrialized nations care a great deal about saving premature babies, they have problems with legal and illegal immigrants; and do, in fact, have fairly sophisticated technology; 3) They all spend considerably less per capita than we do on healthcare. Is it not entirely possible that in certain specialty areas we have wonderful healthcare and lead the world and that in other areas (including public health, prevention, and access to routine health care) we do not do such a good job. We can also explain away our infant mortality data by blaming it on the complexity of our society, it's heterogenous population, endemic substance abuse in some communities, single motherhood, etc. This assumes these problems are not present or as severe as in other industrialized countries. This is not true. Of course there are substantial differences between the countries but most of Europe and parts of Asia are not social utopias. Face it--we spend more per capita on health care than any place in the world, in many ways we excel all other countries but we still have a high infant mortality rate and do not live as long those in most other industrialized countries. But this misses the point. Yes, we have a higher infant mortality rate, but we also use assisted reproductive technology at higher rates. The other industrialized nations to which we are often compared put much stricter limits on what will be paid for and how often. Assisted reproductive technology (in vitro fertilization, etc.) has a higher rate of premature babies and of multiple births. These babies are at higher risk of dying. Hence, we have a higher rate of infant mortality not because we ignore our social problems or because our poor can't get health care, but because we allow more healthcare than other countries. I'd be willing to bet that if we put the same restrictions on assisted reproductive technology that other industrialized nations do, our infant mortality rates would also be the same as theirs. (Remember, the differences between all of us are extremely small to begin with.) I don't think we should limit that technology, but I also don't think that our infant mortality rate is something that necessarily should cause us shame. UPDATE: Another reader says I'm missing a point, too: Yes, other countries have illegal immigration etc., but no other country has anywhere NEAR the problem we do. The US takes in more immigrants than the rest of the countries of the world combined! To say that Japan has the same level of immigrant problem as the US does is ludicrous (not that you said THAT). Good point. posted by Sydney on 2/27/2004 08:02:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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