The $50,000 Baby

The cost of a newborn baby can be as much as $30,000 (http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/article/20090426/LIFE03/904260512/1079/LIFE).

The cost of prenatal care and delivery can be anywhere from $10,000 to $60,000 and beyond.

The median household income in the United States is $50,000 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States).

If you have an uncomplicated pregnancy with a normal vaginal delivery, and have two working parents in the household who earn “median” wages but do not have maternity health care coverage, that leaves you with about $10,000 to get through the year.  If you have an “average” C-section, that leaves you with $0.  And if you have a complicated pregnancy, you could be left $40,000 in debt.  And if your baby needs intensive neo-natal care, you might be stuck with a bill of over $200,000.

Putting things in perspective, why should so natural as bringing a new life into the world cost $50,000+?

You Can Get Pregnant Playing Video Games…SERIOUSLY!!!

A More Realistic SIMS, Please

If you’re at all familiar with the gaming world, you’ve undoubtedly at least heard of the SIMS, a role-playing game where you live the life of an on-screen character.  One of the goals of the SIMS’ developers is to make the game as realistic as possible – which is why the SIMS 2 (and the upcoming 3) characters can become pregnant and have babies (http://kotaku.com/5149307/knocked-up-a-look-at-pregnancy-in-video-games).

According to the Kotaku article, the SIMS characters become pregnant, are housebound, go into labor writing in pain, and then a baby is born.

Pregnancy Magazine Managing Editor Clary Alward doesn’t think that pregnancy in the SIMS is very realistic:  “It’s like Guitar Hero… You play Guitar Hero and it’s nothing like playing guitar.”

Some worry that misrepresenting pregnancy in video games could have a negative impact, especially for young mothers-to-be.  If pregnancy and child rearing are depicted as being easy, the gravity of responsibility could be lost.  Conversely, if pregnancy and child rearing are depicted as too painful, difficult or frightening, it could cause pregnant women to fear maternity and childbirth and cause undue anxiety.

While video game creators are free to depict pregnancy, or anything else, as they’d like, if the goal is to make a game as realistic as possible then pregnancies should be depicted with realism.

How about necessary prenatal care for a healthy child?  Or what about the inability to get insurance or to afford treatment, or being forced to compromise your dignity just to get care for your character and her unborn child?

If the SIMS was more realistic when it came to pregnancy, many women would struggle just to get the care they needed for their characters and digital babies to live healthy and prosper.  In fact, many players would get quite the opposite:  game over.

Economy Trumps Mother Nature

Read this story (http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090111/LOCAL18/901110401).

What can we say about a society that defies the course of nature in order to pay the bills?

“I can’t afford to get pregnant.” It’s said so many times, it’s almost a cliché. Eve couldn’t “afford” to get pregnant, either. But she did, and we are here.

Money should not dictate the perpetuation of the species, should not delay the creation of life or stifle the gratification of being pregnant, having a newborn, being a child, starting a family, etc.

But that is what has become of our society. I am not against capitalism; I am against oppression – and when greedy enterprises threaten the very existence of humanity and take away the only pure and true thing that has been necessary for all of us – pregnancy and birth – then it is time to take action. There can no longer be concern for those who deny pregnant women and their unborn children proper maternal care. They have lost the right to have a say in how, and when, our society moves forward.

It is time for Congress to stand up for natural laws, those unalienable, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution – a right to life.

A right to life is not possible without a right to birth, which is not possible without a right to become pregnant. And with a mother’s right to become pregnant, a child has a right to life. It’s a beautiful cycle; but economic forces – those completely man-made, little more than concepts of measurement that have no real value whatsoever in the natural world – would destroy the sanctity of life and the right to a good life by stealing proper prenatal care from our nation’s children.

Couples are afraid to have children in this environment, and for what reason? Money. Many other reasons can be cited, but money is at the root of all of them. Money buys health care. Money buys formula and diapers. Money buys food.

Without money, our society has no life.

Ironic, isn’t it, how those who would espouse the teachings of the Bible in public actually believe it is better to profit as a company than to prosper as humans?

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Labels: advocate aaron, healthcare, maternity, uninsured

Government-subsidized Health Care In A Year?

Could the U.S. government be voting on government-subsidized health care a year from now? They will be if Pete Stark has his way. The health care reformist and sometimes-cantankerous California representative was quoted in a recent Wall Street Journal article as predicting that it would take a year to clear a public health care plan through Congress (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123008136111331971.html).

This is great news for those of us who know the horrors of facing pregnancy without insurance. But there are plenty of people ready to rain on Stark’s parade if they have their way, including Democrats from his own party, pharmaceutical lobbyists and the health insurance industry.

Two things that set Stark apart from the rest: 1) he does not think Congress should negotiate terms with insurance companies; and 2) he does not think a public health care plan should pay whatever price pharmaceutical companies determine for prescriptions. He wants costs to be fair and affordable, something I’ve been championing as Advocate Aaron for years as well.

Like the rest of us, Stark faces several challenges in his plight to form a public health system, and is often criticized for being blunt and vocal in his positions. Stones are thrown his way because he unyieldingly stands for what he believes in — I thought that’s what we elected these people for!

Some of the arguments Stark and his supporters have to counter include the pharmaceutical industry’s stance that restrictions on drug prices will limit the availability of drugs to people who need them as well as innovation that fuels new medical discoveries. Insurance companies claim premiums will rise as younger people take out the publicly-funded health care policy.

These industries simply want to maintain and proliferate profitability. That’s fine for some corporate entities, but not those in which lives are at stake. The availability of products, in these cases, literally means the difference between life and death.

Medicare and Medicaid already pay whatever the drug companies charge, and in doing so drain public funds that could be used elsewhere – or to provide live-saving drugs to more people. And because these programs constitute two of the largest ‘clients’ drug companies have – they’re billion-dollar clients – it might be the drug companies who cannot afford to exist without publicly-funded health care, and not the other way around.

Publicly-funded insurance would, as Stark points out, have lower overhead costs than current private health care plans, which would mean lower premiums. Naturally, private health care companies don’t want us to believe this, simply because they want to make a buck.

These insurance companies have had their chance – if they would have taken the initiative to develop a health care plan that the millions of uninsured could afford, the volume of takers alone should have covered the costs – if even for a small profit. Intelligent business dictates that a little PR goes a long way, and preventive business measures (just like preventive health care practices) pay big dividends.

If the insurance companies have no consideration for the health of those who cannot afford insurance, then why should the U.S. citizenship give a damn about their business health? I get a bit cantankerous myself at times.

If Stark’s prediction is to come true, there are only two options: 1) the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies get on board and work within the demands of the American people, or 2) the American people take it upon themselves to provide health care and the pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies die. There is no room for debate. That time has passed.

Advocate Aaron