Peggy Garland, a certified nurse-midwife and Coordinator of the Massachusetts Coalition for Midwifery, says the state acts against the interests of women and mothers by limiting access to midwifery services:
Did you know that almost a quarter of all hospital discharges involves maternity care (mother and newborn)? That six out of fifteen of the most common hospital procedures involve maternity care? That Cesarean section is the most commonly performed surgery? Why are so many procedures being performed on essentially healthy people? It’s the same reason behind sky-rocketing costs in all other sectors of health care: reimbursement is procedure-driven.
None of us would want to stint on the health of mothers and babies if all these procedures produced improved outcomes. But our outcomes are among the worst in the developed world and are not improving. The long-term health problems for women associated with Cesarean section are only now being understood. Maternal mortality is actually increasing. Some of the problem is undoubtedly due to excess interventions, especially those of unproven effectiveness.
The hallmark of midwifery is care with minimal interventions, with a focus on those that are evidence-based. Numerous studies of midwifery care involving low-risk women show lower costs and equal or better outcomes, as summarized here, in a report by the prestigious Milbank Memorial Fund.
Consider this:
In 2006, in Massachusetts there were 26,141 Cesarean sections (out of 77,670 births.) If we could reduce this surgery by 1% we would experience a cost savings of nearly $1.5 million. Boston itself provides a good example of the magnitude of the potential cost savings: the three Boston hospitals with the most midwife-attended births saved the Commonwealth nearly $3 million in Medicaid reimbursements in 2006 by reducing Cesarean sections, compared to the Boston hospitals that had few midwives. (1)
We could also allow low-risk women on Medicaid to choose out-of-hospital birth. States that have made state-licensed midwife services available to women on Medicaid have been glad they did. According to Jeffery Thompson, MD MPH, Chief Medical Officer, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services:
In 2007, the Washington State legislature commissioned a cost-benefit analysis from the Department of Health on licensed midwifery care. This independently-conducted analysis found that licensed midwives directly save the State of Washington at least $473,000 per biennium in cost-offsets to Medicaid when women give birth at home or in free-standing birth centers. It should be noted that this was a very conservative estimate which reflects only avoided costs associated with licensed midwives’ lower Cesarean section rates. When facility fees and costly medical procedures such as epidurals and continuous electronic fetal monitoring are factored into the equation, the actual savings to Medicaid biennially are approximately $3.1 million. These savings occur with licensed midwives attending just under 2% of the births in the state. (2)
Massachusetts midwives have encountered regulatory barriers that limit their availability to women. Only 60% of hospitals with obstetrical services in Massachusetts have midwives. Many of those that do have midwives have not expanded their services because they aren’t aware of the cost savings they are getting—ironically, current law causes midwives to be invisible in hospital accounting systems. Massachusetts does not regulate midwives providing homebirth services, as Washington State does (and NH and VT), therefore denying women on Medicaid a quality low-cost option.
Senator Richard Moore, Chair of the Health Care Finance Committee, recognized some of these issues several years ago when he introduced legislation to streamline and consolidate the regulation of midwives in the Commonwealth. As we move from the provision of universal coverage to the painful task of cost-savings, we can use some simple ways to lower costs, increase satisfaction and improve outcomes for our families. Increasing access to midwives (for women who want them) has just such potential.
Notes:
[1] MA DPH, secondary analysis Kelly Roberts, RN, CNM
[2] From letter of support submitted to the Congressional Budget Office July 2009.
Thank you for this post. This information needs more attention.
Such great information! Thank you !
Thank you for covering this important topic. Midwifery should be the norm for low-risk mothers giving birth, and obstetrics should be considered the ‘alternative’. OB’s are trained surgeons, and their training and the hospital environment has lost the ability to support natural childbirth. We need more midwives!
It simply seems bizarre to me that we have allowed MDs to run the maternity care system. Virtually no medical students sees an unadulterated birth while in school and then once they graduate they are somehow the experts on birth?!
Developed countries who utilize midwives and out of hospital births have much lower maternal and infant morbidity and mortality rates than the US. And they cost savings is amazing.
Women who can pay for midwifery care out-of-pocket may do so, it is simply wrong to deny women dependent on medicaid or even private insurance to cover maternity bills this benefit.
Thank you for putting the information into writing and making it available to everyone. This speaks volumes of truth and I hope that someone is listening.
As I think about my future plans for giving birth, the benefits of midwifery care, probably at home, are personally appealing to me. I am a consumer of mainstream medical care as well as alternative medicine, and this option for birth would be the right choice for my family. Therefore, it is important to me that midwives be protected by law; and as a citizen, the financial and public health benefits to society are made obvious here. Thank you for highlighting this issue.
Thank you so much for bringing attention to this very important issue. I would love to see and hear more coverage on NPR about midwifery care as an excellent choice for healthy, low-risk women.
I agree with Jaclyn. Please keep this topic in the spotlight.
As a Midwife of 30yrs and well over 2,000 babies out of the hospital, the topic of Midwifery is near and dear to my heart.
There are multi reasons for home birth, besides the personal reasons, the money it saves should be a huge factor. Over the yrs I have had many clients who have picked home birth because of the costs, the clients are then surprised of the extensive quality of care they recieved, as well as the feelings of being well taken care of. These same parents will chose a home birth over and over again even if they had an option of going to the hospital. Medicaid and independant insurances should pay for home births or birth centers. After all they pay for the birth services, not the place. The Midwives should be paid at the same level as MD’s as they often attend births that would have be c/sections had they been attended in the hospital. Even if the Midwives get paid at MD rate, we will still cost less money.
We take more time with our clients, and well documented as a safe alternative.
Thank you for this important information. I live in Washington state and I’m proud of our advances for midwifery care here. Hopefully other states will follow this lead. Please continue to post on this critical issue!
As a labor doula and mother, first being a cesarean section and 4 others were delivered safely, gently and naturally by wonderful midwives that gave me my 4 VBAC’s. Midwives are the backbone of birth and our system, especially in the New York area, with birthing center closing in hospitals, we are in big trouble. As a Doula I am finding it more and more difficult for parents to have the birth they desire. Midwives know more about the birth proces than OB’s. OB’s are surgeons and look at every birth as a potential cesarean. We need more midwives in Hospitals and we need birthing centers.
it is so important that women are given every opportunity to take back birth. sadly, it seems this belief is of a minority. however, shedding light on the economical advantages is a a powerful way of bringing every american to understand and support this progress!
[...] Tags: doulas, health care, midwivery, reproductive justice, researchPosted in Doula Work, political, research, things you should totally know Midwives: A Safe, Cost-Saving Alternative [...]
I think that EVERY woman should have the option of using a midwife for their birth. It is obvious that midwives can provide lower cost births as well as healthier outcomes for both mother and baby (in most situations). In AZ it is illegal to have a midwife attend a homebirth vbac. There is only ONE midwife that is nearbye that is able to do vbacs at the hospital. For someone like myself, who is planning a vbac, this really limits my ability to find a healthcare provider that I feel will give me the best care. Not only that, but I have fantastic health insurance coverage that covers every OB in the land but won’t cover the ONE midwife that does VBACs at the hospital even though it would most likely end up costing a heck of a lot less. Things seems little backwards here.
I think this article brings up an essential aspect of the debate over health care in this country, one that is very much overlooked in most press coverage. Not only could midwives (nurse midwives and lay midwives) save the healthcare system billions of dollars, they also generally have better birth outcomes than hospital births with an MD. They are more sparing with costly, risky interventions, and have a much smaller rate of C-sections (transfered to a hospital). Countries that use midwives in a higher percentage of births, as in many European countries, find that the cost of each birth steeply declines.
Thank you for a well written article about the benefits of midwifes. I work with so many pregnant women who wanted to choose a homebirth but because it wouldn’t be covered by their insurance end up choosing a hospital birth. These women usually are so worried about interventions and possible cesareans and not knowing the person who will be catching their baby. So much unnecessary stress–it will be a great day when ALL women are allowed to choose a homebirth with midwives without penalty.
Please give us more coverage on these stories.
As a woman, a mother, and a doula, I can attest to how much this is such an important topic amid today’s health care issues.
This is so important– thank you for writing this! I hope that the health care debate can begin to address this issue, that of maternity/newborn care costs and the role that midwives can pay in bringing costs down. and once that happens, then perhaps we can begin to really improve perinatal outcomes in our country. Birth matters– on so many levels!
Thank you for covering this issue! I would love to hear more coverage about midwifery on NPR.
This essay speaks a truth that needs to be heard by all. As we engage in a national debate about how to reform our healthcare system, the many benefts of midwife care- which go far beyond financial benefits- need to be factored into the equation. NPR, please continue to bring this issue to the forefornt.
Midwives are a very important component of healthcare. They can offer many services to families and I think we as a society need to become more aware of their great service and how they fill an important need in our healthcare system.
It’s important to remind the decision makers of the financial benefit of Midwives since money is usually the deciding factor in any reform. Thankfully for us Midwifery care is cost effective AND safer.
it is great to see this issue receiving attention! More please! This affects so many women, babies, and families.
As a future-midwife, I am so please to see this kind of information about the benefits of midwifery care being covered. The only way women can make truly informed decisions about their bodies is to have access to evidence-based information. Midwifery care is not only good for mothers and babies, but is also greatly beneficial to the national wallet. Thank you!
This is what health reform should be focusing on. Why not focus on money saving, practical services that improve outcomes? Midwifery is a perect example of a real long term solution. The biggest barrier is education, which through an outlet like NPR could be overcome easily.
As a midwifery student (and in particular a CPM, and one who seeks to practice and serve women in the out of hospital setting) nothing pleases me more than to see positive midwifery discussion based upon real data, real facts and real truths.
There is so much hyperbole, fear and judgment tossed around out there that discourage and limit women’s choices and keeps them in the dark about what kind of health care is and should be available to them during their childbearing years.
Practical, affordable, accessible, choice-filled maternity care for ALL women, meeting and supporting each woman’s choice and value system!!!
Keep the discussion alive please! Discussion may will bring the change in maternity & health care we do desperately need in the US.
THank you WBUR for bringing attention to the benefits (both human and cost) of midwifery. My first child was born via csection. It was a very difficult experience for us all. My second child was born naturally with the assistance of a mid-wife. My second birth redeemed the experience of the first. I can’t begin to explain the differences in care I received from my midwives vs. my OB/GYN (and he was a good doctor!) Midwifery empowers women to make the best choices for themselves and their babies. We desparately need more attention to the state of maternal care in the US! Keep it coming!
Thank you for sharing this information. It’s urgent that this issue be brought to the attention of everyone in our government. Both of my children were born via c-section because I didn’t know better. Now I’m a doula and doing something about it.
Midwifery is VITAL to the future of childbirth, in or out of hospitals. Thanks you.
Excellent! Thank you for this information! I want to hear more. Please continue this discussion.
Peggy, it was great to hear this perspective after the one-sided piece on the Today Show last week. This is what I like about NPR–they give the facts, not knee-jerk reactions or stories seeded by the people with the most PR dollars.
I have always wondered why insurance companies have so little interest in midwifery reiumbursement when the cost savings are so obvious. Thank you for bringing attention to this issue.
This is great information. As a Maryland resident, I fortunately have access to midwifery services and I am utilizing this option for the birth of my first child at home. I was appalled by the number of unnecessary interventions that occur during hospital births. All women should have access to midwives (in the hospital setting or at home)if they desire to use their services.
Thank you! it is so important for this information to reach the public so change can happen.
Thank you for writing this piece and addressing this important issue from a fact, research-based perspective. This debate is HOTTER it seems than it has ever been. Women and their families are being accused of being “trendy” “selfish” and “hedonistic”. Unfortunately, these words carry a tremendous amount of weight in the public debate even though it is far from the accurate perception of their decision making process. The financial aspect of the increased medicalization of childbirth is often overlooked in this debate and should not be.
In a time when we are all acutely aware of the enormous debt our country has amassed as well as the ongoing debate regarding the costs of meidcal care, I hope that this aspect of informed, no/low intervention birth practices by midwives will be recognized and supported.
Women are trying to have the healthiest pregnancy and birth outcomes for themselves and their babies not because they are hedonistic but because they have looked at the research and the evidence points to the practice of the midwifery model of care as the optimal route to that end.
Website address
Thank you for this post! I think this is such an important topic, and I would love to hear more coverage about it on NPR.
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Thank you for putting in writing this very important subject. Utilizing midwives to lower health care costs is a no-brainer, and I hope the idea gets more attention. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if lawmakers used this information when creating healthcare reform legislation? While Obama tries to figure out how to pay for a public insurance option, here is his answer! I hope the enormous cost-savings gets more coverage on a national level.
Thank you for continuing the dialogue. This among other things a women’s rights issue. As more women are elected and appointed to positions that impact on policy decisions, we will see a shift to the family/woman centered healthcare model.
Thank you for this insightful, concise post. Our nation needs to improve maternity care and lower our abysmal infant mortality rate (as well as our growing maternal mortality rate). Midwifery is the way to do this, and save millions of dollars in the process. Thanks for drawing attention to this important issue and its elegantly simple solution.
Thank you, thank you for your attention to this critical issue. Factual information is refreshing on a topic that generates so much emotion and judgement. We need to pay more attention to woman-centered care, which ends up being the most cost-effective care as well!
Please continue to cover this issue!
Thank you for posting this important information! It is crucial that the awareness of this issue gets the attention it deserves, as women and babies also get the much needed care that is their birthright. It is time for these laws to change to reflect a wiser state, c’mon Massachusetts!! Midwives are women with great wisdom and they can and will play a vital role in the birthing process for women and their babies. If more women, regardless of their income, had the support of midwives during their labor, more women and babies would experience the joy of birth, rather than the medical procedure it has become!! If we don’t support our mothers giving birth to our future generations, then who do we support?
As a doula I see things everyday that can help women and families that don’t cost much money at all! The old adage of “KISS” (keep it simple stupid) sometimes applies.
I would love to hear more stories about women’s health and also on how basic changes in the attitudes towards healthcare can change the dynamics we have today. (cost, interventions….)
Excellent explanation of the importance of midwives in the birth process and health care system. Parents deserve full and equal access to all available options.
Great article! Thank you. More people must realize that we’re spending too much and getting so little in conventional maternity care. Midwifery is a beautiful example of simple common sense: don’t fix it if it’s not broken… then we won’t have to pay to fix it!
Great article, thanks for shedding light on such an important yet little known part of the medical care community.
Thank you for providing this enlightening article. I am intrigued and hope that this remains a topic of discussion in our nation’s health care debate. What a wonderful example of a win-win solution- improve maternal and neonatal health outcomes (and satisfaction with the birth experience), and lower costs at the same time!
Thank you for a thoughtful discussion of the advantages of midwifery care for birthing women. More women need to hear about the midwifery model of care and its many benefits. I birthed my first child under the care of a midwife and believe strongly that all women need access to the level of knowledge and attention I received.
wonderful job ! As a homebirth mom, grandmother , and practicing CPM….the words were honey to my ears. Not everyone will choose a midwife or an out of hospital birth, but everyone should have the choice !….and it truly behooves the states to get on board for both safety and financial reasons.
Excellent facts-based article. One wonders why insurance companies aren’t requiring midwifery care for all healthy pregnant women? – the numbers are very clear that the care is better, safer, and cheaper. What the numbers don’t say is that families cared for by midwives are also more likely to support the infant’s health with breastfeeding and better bonding (due to lower rates of post-partum depression.)
Keep articles like this coming!
Thank you for offering some coverage of this topic. Crucial to healthcare reform is reform of the way women give birth in this country. Our mortality rates, as well as as infant mortality rates are abysmal, especially if one considers the amount we spend is substantially higher in this country as compared to other developed and even some developing countries.
Please continue to offer information on midwifery in general; consumers in our country need to know more about this valuable option in health care for women.
Thanks for the great article! I look forward to sharing it with my friends too.
So glad to see an article that brings more attention to this topic. Women have options in how they give birth and we need to keep shouting it on the rooftops!
Wonderful article. This information needs to be readily available to all women, so that we can make informed decisions on our maternity care! Most women don’t even know the option of midwives and home births exist!
Thank you for writing such an insightful article! This is a subject that needs far more POSITIVE attention than it currently gets!
Excellent article. Thank you for this coverage. If we put more maternity care in the hands of experienced, caring midwives, we will be doing a great service to our future generations. Please, continue to spread the word–as we debate health-care, this topic needs to be heard!
Thank you for emphasizing the cost-effectiveness of health care that centers around the Midwives Model of Care. Any practitioner can use the Midwives Model of Care and achieve these results – it’s a bit more difficult to realize results as impressive in exclusively hospital settings (mostly due to the drive to maximize profits), but still possible. Normal birth at home costs a small fraction of the amount that the same normal birth would cost in a hospital.
Great article. I wish more people could see the cost and health benefits of midwifery care. We need more articles like this out there.
Thank you for this wonderful article! The subject is timely for women & their families in this difficult economic time. With health care reform on the horizon midwifery care can be part of the solution in providing affordable maternity care for women. There are models world-wide where midwives provide care for the majority of women and OB’s serve the higher-risk population…let’s take note of these models and offer this evidence based model of care to all women in the United States! As a mother and practicing midwife I implore the media to give a balanced perspective to the public so that women & their families can make informed decisions! Continue with good articles on this subject.
I would like to see out-of-hospital birth made more accessible to women with health insurance. Sadly, many women choose a far more expensive hospital birth simply because their insurance covers it, with very little out-of-pocket cost to them, and won’t cover the services of a Certified Professional Midwife at all. So the insurance company ends up paying 2-3 times as much as it would otherwise, because it covers the hospital birth but not the out-of-hospital birth. Don’t the insurance companies (and Medicaid) see how this could save them a LOT of money?
a friend of mine just gave birth to her second baby at the brigham. she had a very quick birth, basically she arrived and delivered her beautiful new baby boy. their insurance covered the birth, but she was just noting to me today that on the bill they received covering all the charges and requesting their co-pay indicated that her inverention-free, non-medicated (she did not even have an i.v. put in while she was there) cost her insurance company $18,000. EIGHTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS go give birth in a hospital bed. lovely, of course, that she had the option and the insurance, but surely when you compare the cost of a homebirth with a certified professional midwife here in the boston area — roughly from between about $3200-3600 — anyone can immediately see the cost savings. it continues to befuddle me that an insurance company would rather cover an $18,000 in-hospital birth than a $3500 home one.
Thank you for covering this important topic. The Midwives Model Of Care works. Midwives are the experts in normal birth. Putting midwives back into the roll of caring for normal healthy pregnancies and then OBs caring for the rest of the population would bring our maternity care system back into balance. It is a system that works in many other countries that have better outcomes than the U.S. and spend less money for them.
More than 30% of babies are surgically delivered in the U.S. Most of these surgeries are preventable. That is just not acceptable. This does not happen when normal birth practices are applied to healthy women with normal pregnancies. They then have normal births.
Thank you so much for sharing this topic with your readers. You have touched on something that can make a huge difference in mother and infant health.
Every pregnant woman should be made aware of the smart, healthy, and cost effective choice for birth that midwifery offers. Thank you for covering this important information regarding midwives’ professionalism, skill, and the need for more access to them.
In today’s climate of health care reform, and with 20% of health care spending being devoted to birth (and then how much more in chain reactions? Women needing hysterectomies due to scar tissue from multiple cesareans, children who have long term health issues from the ill effects of unnecessary cesarean birth…), it is important for us to look at how to save money in birth.
I’ve had 3 homebirths. The total cost of those 3 births combined did not cost as much as a single one of my 2 hospital births–both of which were low risk births without epidural anesthesia. Not to mention that I found the homebirths to be MUCH more rewarding and satisfying.
thank you! this is such an important issue. Thank you for helping keep it in the public eye.
Yes! Thank you for bringing this reality to the public’s attention. Just one of the many reasons the world needs more Midwives.
Thank you for such a sensible and logical article. For my birth alone my doctor billed my insurance more than the entire cost of prenatal, birth, and postpatum care from any local midwife and MY DOCTOR NEVER SHOWED UP AT MY BIRTH, one nurse was with me for my entire 45min stay. How did my doctor earn that huge payment for my unmedicated unassisted (except by a kind nurse standing by)birth? I desperately wanted to stay home and wished my insurance gave me the option at the time as I could not pay out of pocket and was on welfare. I have since wished I’d stayed home alone to birth but thats not what insurance companies and care proffessionals want, women birthing alone because their options have been limited. Its happening all over Australia as home-birth midwives are being forbidden to work. The sensible thing here is to support the midwives and women who want them, to create better more gentle transitions into parenthood (by allowing parent’s their own un-coerced choice in birthing) therefore stronger healthier families all while saving unthinkable amounts of money on healthcare without comprimising its quality, instead improving it! Its compassionate and common sense!
This is such a HUGE issue that many people don’t fully understand. Thanks for bringing attention to the matter and I hope to read more on the subject in the future!
Thank you for doing this very important work of bringing this information to people’s attention. The sad part is that people have to work so hard to make midwifery care and home births an acceptable, respected and reimbursable choice. It is a respected and highly desired form of care in most other countries in the world, including the Netherlands, where families have the option between home birth and hospital birth. Why is this so charged and difficult in this country?
I had 3 homebirths. For the first one, I delivered a 10.5 lb baby. If I would have been in a hospital it would have resulted in an expensive, painfull and potentially dangerous c-section. I think more research like this is needed.
Thank you for posting this! I think it is really important for expectant mothers and families, or anyone who might know them, to know this information. This can make a huge impact!
Thanks for this great post! I have been hoping to read and hear more about midwifery as it relates to the current health care debates. I am a labor doula and have attended both home and hospital births, and birthed my own daughter at home after seeing both options and fully researching my choices. I would have chosen a home birth even had it been more costly than the hospital birth, but for me, even paying the full fee to my midwives would have been less than my co-pay (20%) for a hospital birth in my area! (My insurance ended up covering 50% of my homebirth fee). And I had excellent, excellent care from my midwives who saw me for an HOUR in my HOME at each prenatal visit, and were amazing help with breastfeeding issues afterwards. I believe every woman should have this option, and the fact that it could save our country tons of money is another great reason to support the midwifery model of care.
Thanks again for bringing up this issue! I want to hear more!
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Midwifery care is not only safe and economical, it is more satisfying, addressing the humanness of birth, not just the sterile medical issues. It assures that mom and baby are happy as well as healthy. The entire family becomes stronger. We can’t neglect the spiritual/emotional aspects of health and life without serious consequences. Midwifery and home birth are a foundation block to our communities, nations and global health.
It is so very interesting that a limit to accessing midwives is considered prudent (by whom exactly?)yet throwing every intervention and medical procedure at a healthy low-risk mother is now considered the norm (because birth is a crisis situation, right?). While obstetrics has its place in emergencies and high risk pregnancies, limiting women’s access to a low-cost and safer alternative is just plain wrong. Mothers who choose midwifery care are thoughtful about their choice. No one has a more vested interest in the health of her baby than the mother herself! Women ARE capable of choosing their caregiver, it is her right!!
As a birth doula, homebirth advocate, and mother, this is an incredibly important topic. And a very well done article. I would love to see more articles cover midwifery and homebirth.
I am glad to see this topic covered in a public forum. We need to discuss midwifery care and the benefits it has to a society where medical births in hospitals are very costly financially and personally. Our cesarean rate is still growing in the US and expensive medical interventions are now commonplace in almost all hospital births. Midwives are a wonderful option for healthy, low risk women.
I had a wonderful home birth in Maine with two CPMs and would highly recommend midwifery care to anyone who would consider this an option. We need to keep talking about this issue, so please- Bring it on!
Great information on one of the MANY benefits of midwifery care. Women and families need to have all options of maternity care available to them.
In all of the talk about health care reform I would love to see this issue inch its way into the spotlight. Thanks for writing this article. It’s really important to me that women have the right to choose where they give birth. What would be amazing (although should be common sense!) is if their insurance provider would support that decision and pay for the midwife!
Thanks for trying to make this part of the national conversation!!!
Thanks for this piece! I’ve been wondering about how midwifery would fare in the national health care debate and I feel it’s critical more attention be paid to this valuable, cost-effective and empowering service. As a mother of 2 who experienced first-hand the wonder of natural childbirth twice, I can honestly say that embracing the idea that this is what our bodies are “meant to do” with the support of a caring midwife is something that could profoundly change how maternity care is handled. The unnecessary tests, stress and “medical approach” to a natural process just blows my mind. Keep up the great work shining a spotlight on these issues.
Thank you so much for addressing this issue! Every woman should have the right to choose where and how she gives birth as well as what type of maternity care practitioner she desires regardless of her social/economic status. There definitely needs to be discussions on state and national levels regarding evidence-based maternity care, the impact that not acknowledging and practicing it has on the health and lives of our mothers, babies, families, communities and nation and how we can improve our current system.
Please keep the discussions going!
Cesarean sections are of epidemic proportions! Midwives do not benefit financially from performing a cesarean section/OB’s do! OB’s are SURGEONS – do the math. This information needs to be out there constantly until our broken health “care” system wakes up.
my c-section sucked
my vbac at home rocked
go midwives!!
Most women in the U.S. are not even aware of midwives as an option. More pieces on this type of information can increase public demand for access and coverage. As a midwife, there are many barriers to my being able to provide homebirth care. As a mother, my daughter’s home waterbirth in the care of licensed and experienced midwives was utterly profound.
Thanks for a great article on an important subject. Each time it is bought to the public is another step toward better and lower cost health care for families.
Farrah
Great article. Great info! Midwives provide better services at lower cost. Midwives rock!
Thank you for putting these words out there so clearly. I’m a home-birth myself, and know that midwives can be such a great support to any woman, at home or in hospital.
Midwives providing birth services, and keeping birth normal instead of a medical event, would go a long way in supporting true health care reform. We love our midwives!!
I would love to listen to an extended NPR segment on this very topic!
It is a source of continual perplexity to me that using midwives to attend low risk births results in better outcomes and lower cost and yet is not the de facto default in this country.
Thanks for bringing attention to a very simple and effective way to improve maternal and infant health while saving money at the same time! We need to hear more on this issue. I’d love to read more my Peggy Garland and hear her interviewed on NPR!
Thank you for highlighting this key issue. Women deserve better than what they’re getting in our current system. Midwifery care has the potential to meet the needs of many women of different class and socio-economic status as well as of different cultures. It would also employ many women. Both economic stimulus and healthcare reform in the best sense of both.
Midwives are a big part of the answer to today’s issues.
MORE on this!
This is a wonderful commentary and so important during this time we are determining the parameters of national health care. Women have been herded long enough. It is time for us to stand up and speak out for what is best for our selves and our babies, and for our pocket books, as well!
Excellent review of this important topic! Midwifery care is a valuable but under-recognized part of our health care system that deserves more media attention. The facts support a midwife model of care as a the quality choice for healthy women and babies.
This is a great post on a very important topic.