Another Glimmer of Hope For Pregnant Women

Remember the huge March of Dimes Report Card that shed light on the pervasive premature birth problem in the United States?  You know, the one that put in indisputable figures the dismal state of our maternity health care system… the one that found that one of the leading factors in the U.S. premature birth rate is a lack of prenatal care?

While legislators finally begin addressing the overwhelming need for proper and affordable prenatal care, some institutions have been offering affordable prenatal care to pregnant women for years.  And the results are just as stunning as the figures in the March of Dimes report.

Take Dallas’ Parkland Memorial Hospital, which last week announced that it had cut premature rates almost by half in the last two decades (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-babies_28met.ART0.State.Edition1.4a5c74e.html).

The information published by Parkland validates the assertion that prenatal care is vital to healthy, timely delivery.  Two paragraphs say it all:

“Dallas County’s public hospital, which operates one of the nation’s busiest maternity wards, cut its rate of premature births nearly in half – to 4.9 percent in 2006 from 9.4 percent of births in 1988.

Parkland officials credited comprehensive prenatal care for improving the outcomes of 16,000 births annually at the hospital, which has the second-highest number of deliveries in any U.S. hospital.”

The statistics are amazing, especially for a high-volume hospital such as Parkland.  And to what does Parkland owe its stellar premature birth rate record?  PRENATAL CARE!

What’s more, Parkland officials say most of their maternity patients are low-income women who either pay affordable $50 co-payments per visit or qualify for government assistance and pay little to nothing at all.

With these figures, it’s no surprise that Parkland is ranked among the nation’s best gynecological hospitals (http://www.usnews.com/listings/hospitals/6740950).  And because Parkland is a PUBLIC HOSPITAL, the hospital’s success in reducing instances of premature births lends credence to the notion that publicly-funded medicine can and does work!

Let’s hope that the news doesn’t fall on deaf ears, that Congress learns from the successes of others and works to provide proper prenatal care to all women, regardless of socioeconomic factors, so America’s future is invested in healthy children.

The Family Medical and Leave Act Rendered Worthless Especially for the working Class Pregnant Mom

The Family Medical and Leave Act protects the rights of mothers to take up to 12 weeks off from work for childbirth (see the fact sheet here:  http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs28.pdf).  Despite this, more and more new mothers are returning to the workplace sooner than they wanted to help stabilize family finances, as reported by Dana Mattioli in the Wall Street Journal (http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2009/03/11/new-mothers-cutting-short-maternity-leave/).

The current economic climate has put a strain on American families – especially when a mother is out of work and a father is laid off.  Our need to earn has forced women to give up their rights and the precious bonding that only mothers and babies can share.

The FMLA requires that employers with at least 50 employees allow for 12 weeks of unpaid workleave – but allows mothers to waive that right.  And that’s exactly what many mothers are doing.  The FMLA is now essentially worthless.

If the government really wants the FMLA to do some good, it would require that maternity leave be paid.  We’re expected to give 30 years of our lives to the workforce, profiting CEOs exponentially.  Can’t they be expected to help cover the bills for a few months out of three decades?  Or should the government pick up the tab with all the paper money it is printing?

Perhaps originally intended to help disadvantaged mothers invoke their right to recovery and bond with their newborns, a lack of foresight has now made the FMLA relevant to the advantaged.  If families can’t afford maternity leave, then the Family Medical and Leave Act does little for them.  It benefits the advantaged, yet leaves the disadvantaged to struggle for survival.

Perhaps the Obama administration should revisit the Family and Medical Leave Act and not only provide time, but also the means to survive while women care for their children.

COBRA Alternatives for Uninsured Pregnant Women

If your pregnant and recently lost your job due to layoffs, you’ve probably been offered COBRA – an opportunity to continue to receive health insurance benefits provided that you pay for them. And, you’ve probably discovered that COBRA is expensive – extravagantly so.

If you’re eligible for COBRA, the stimulus plan has provisions to subsidize 65% of your premium until December 31, 2009. That means that if your monthly COBRA premium is $1,000, you will actually pay $350 – still a large chunk of change, especially when you’ve recently lost your income.

eHealthInsurance.com has instituted a new COBRA comparison tool (https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/ehi/health-insurance/cobra-learning-center.html?allid=Com22130) that allows you input your COBRA premium, find out what your subsidized payment would be if you take COBRA coverage, and then offers alternative individual and family health care plans.

WARNING: Watch what you sign up for. While the eHealthInsurance.com tool seems to offer excellent COBRA alternatives (starting at around $50 per month for a 29 year old woman, depending on location and health history), certain factors can turn appealing offers into nightmares laden with shortcomings.

For example, a plan with a $50 premium might sound good, but when you take a closer look you might find that you have a $10,000 deductible, a 20% co-pay, and that the plan DOES NOT COVER PRENATAL CARE OR HOSPITAL DELIVERY. At the end of the day, such a plan would not offer much of a benefit to pregnant women at all; despite the $300/month premium savings over COBRA.

The bottom line is that comprehensive health insurance policies are not cheap – so don’t be fooled by affordable policies that will come up short when you need them the most.