Maternity Wards, NICUs Face Budget Scrutiny
An unlikely battlefield in Texas’ budget war is a hushed pink-and-blue hospital nursery, where 1- and 2-pound babies bleat like lambs under heating lamps and neonatal nurses use tiny rulers to measure limbs no bigger than fingers.
State health officials, searching for solutions to Texas’ multibillion-dollar budget shortfall, have set their sights on these neonatal intensive care units, or NICUs, which they fear are being overbuilt and overused by hospitals eager to profit from the high-cost care — and by doctors too quick to offer pregnant mothers elective inductions and Caesarean sections before their babies are full term.
The Texas Health ...
Comments (8)
Mark Dickinson
I used to work as a general pediatrician in small and medium sized hospitals in New Mexico. We had no NICU or neonatologists and did a decent job of caring for sick babies. A neonatologist with an NICU would have done a slightly better job, but at a large increase in costs. The public and its representatives in government need to decide if they want absolutely the best care, regardless the cost, or if something less than that is acceptable to save money. This issue comes up time and again in my daily work. Do I handle something myself or refer to a specialist (more cost, slightly better care), do I order an expensive test to rule out the "one in a million" causes of a problem or do I use my clinical judgement alone. At the moment the decision is easy since the expectations of the medical community, the public, and the legal system all dictate that I should take the costly route. You can have very good care for a lot less money, but if you want the very best that is extremely costly.
Norman Allen
When you combine profit motive with government subsidized service, the door is opened wide for dipping into cookie jar. I have seen patients who take 20-30 different medicines, going from doctor to doctor every day of the week. I have seen patients on 800 mg of Seroquel, enough to knock off a horse. I have seen "patients" on disability that are healthier than most working people. All of these people are supported by taxpayers because profiteers treat them as easy money makers, not because they need what they are given.
Want to save money? Shut the collusion between attorneys and disability system, PAY PATIENTS CASH TO STAY HEALTHY rather than paying the providers for services "patients" don't need. Take profit out of the system, you have a solution. AND WHAT DO THE INSURANCE EXECUTIVE PROVIDE IN THE HEALTH CARE SYSTEM beside big mansions, yachts, toys for themselves?
If you take compassion and humanity out of capitalism, it becomes economic/social Darwinism, with dire consequences for a society. Evidence seems to support this: Cuba and Venezuela has better health care system than we do. We spend more per capita than anyone else on health care yet we have the sickest population of all the industrialized countries because profiteering is the major force in running our lives than that of other countries. We either reform to make government an objective umpire or accept the inevitable collapse coming from government helping those with the most keep piling up on more and more. We must set some limit on the accumulation of unneeded gold in fewer hands. Perhaps doing something like the Swedes, British, Germans, Japanese, French have done!
Sheri Alexander via Texas Tribune on Facebook
cutting planned paretnhood and aid to women and families in poverty would increase the # of babies there im sure. also cutting access or future access to better healthcare by repealing the new law.
Kelly Montiville
I am an OB/Gyn who has delivered babies at 3 different hospitals, in 3 cities, over the past 7 years. None of those hospitals allowed elective delivery by c-section or induction of labor prior to 39 weeks. The St. David's Family of hospitals has had this policy for years. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) also has a policy against elective deliveries before 39 weeks. Quality hospitals and physicians who are well-informed do not delivery patients prior to 39 weeks unless there is a medical reason.
Peter Liepmann
And each dollar spent on prenatal care saves $2-3 on NICU costs, and $4-5 on special education, and $8-10 on lost taxes on future wages. Health care costs are like a balloon- you squeeze it one place, and it bulges out twice as much somewhere else.
Primary care saves money. In the long run, when you cut access to primary care, it costs you three times as much as you thought you saved. The 'savings' that Texas is getting by making Medicaid harder to get just means you're going to spend more-lots more-later.
So compassion is good business, and mean-spiritedness is wasteful. Remember Matthew 25:41-46 .
Cutting programs that benefit mothers and babies is like eating your seed corn.
Richard Stewart via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Woman need to be helped. Planned parenthood is important. Last week Dallas Morning News Quoted that the cost of a Pregnancy Shot went from 8 us dollars to 1500 us dollars. Woman that can not afford that shot will still getthat shot .
Richard Stewart via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Republicans this is the cost of saying no. You need to learn the word yes. May you learn to think with your heart. Use your will and heart and soul to build your community.
LoveThisLand KeepItFree
Obesity, sedentary lifestyle, being out of touch with our bodies, being fearful of the natural process, artificial intervention such as sonograms, fetal monitoring, poking, prodding, chemicals to force the body to function abnormally, these are what usually create disastrous outcomes.
If I were pregnant I would stay home, but of course, you think of yourselves as gods doctors want that outlawed. Some of us will do it anyway.