Katy Talento, a health policy advisor in President Trump's first term, doesn't like hospitals much, even when they work. She uses her granddaughter's birth to explain why. A take worth considering.
So much truth, thank you for highlighting this. There are some wonderful birthing centers in our area that are a much better fit for moms (but be careful, do your research, make sure they’re a good, experienced one, I’ve seen horror stories when it’s just some random con woman who knows nothing about delivering babies).
My controversial remark regards the conclusion. After all she eloquently wrote about what’s best fur tye baby, what nature and studies teach us about what’s good for child development… she sends the other kids to daycare??? She should look into the studies about the dangers of childcare and the amazing benefits of staying home with mom!
I recall my daughter's birth when we knew in advance there was a chance of minor complications. The hospital explicitly forbade us from using a camera to document the moment, no doubt out of fear of litigation if they did something wrong. Fortunately, my daughter was born healthy and we had a stubborn Doula in the room who pulled out her own phone to take pictures before anyone could stop her.
I wonder how much of the unpleasantly interventionist aspects of modern medicine are driven by the fear of lawsuits. I bet a lot. Certainly the cost spiral is propelled in part by the insurance that hospitals and doctors need to take on to legally practice.
Trial lawyers are huge donors to the political class. Perhaps improving our medical system needs to start with shutting down that money spigot.
Trial lawyers give far less to politicians than doctors, hospitals, drug companies, medical device manufacturers, and others in the healthcare industry. Trial lawyers and patients are wildly outgunned. That's why there are so many limits on the amount that a patient who suffered malpractice can receive. There are no limits in any other industry. If Ford sells you a defective car, you can sue them for as much as you want. If Dupont pollutes your river, there are no limits.
Once admitted to a corporate hospital, a patient is no longer a free citizen. He is a bright, shiny excuse to bill an insurance company. In 2021, I went in for open heart surgery: a valve repair. The surgery and services were top notch. And yet. I began to notice attempts to pile on devices, surgeries, procedures and pharmaceuticals that I did not need. Oh gee, whatever could be the reason. Could it be, oh, I don't know, profit? No, I don't want a pacemaker. No, I don't need to stick around in a bed "for observation." No, I don't want your rat poison blood thinner. No, I don't need more opiate derivatives. No, I don't need to go down for physical therapy (I am a runner). No, I don't need home nursing or home health care. I got out of there as quickly as possible, and possibly escaped nasty infectious diseases (e.g. MRSA) as a result. I am VERY skeptical that socialized medicine would make this better. But still. Beware. Be your own advocate, and at the appropriate moment, say no. Everyone should understand the underlying financial incentives. Having someone else pay for it (the insurance company) makes this worse, not better. I wish that the deductibles were higher, not lower, and that patients had more perceptible skin in the game.
By all accounts, socialized medicine is worse. Not financially, of course. But with outcomes. People die waiting forever. People die because administration deems the care too expensive. On and on. Different issues and by no means an improvement unless you think it is a fair trade to increase your likelihood of bad care in order to save a monthly premium.
Yeah, it was a less than ideal scenario. The call to CPS was unnecessary in my opinion. BUT, as a RN that just recently left the hospital environment (not a L&D nurse), there is a reason why things are the way they are. One, you have to understand where the protocols come from-accrediting agencies and the government. If you do not follow protocol and an inspection finds you do not, trouble for you and the hospital system. Seriously, hospitals have entire departments full of nurses and others that exist, not to care for patients, but to make sure all is in compliance. Two, we are a highly litigious society, especially in OB. If there had been a problem, an injury that caused cerebral palsy say, the doctor and all staff involved could be sued. Know what they will be asked? "Did you follow protocol?" It's not just in OB but in all specialties. Long story short, it's not just the cash register driving all this.
And if what she recounts is true (I have doubts), they strayed from guidelines. Pitocin is not required and can be refused--and it isn't given before active labor and not after a mere couple of hours.
Epidurals do not meaningfully slow contractions, and they do NOT stop them. Her assertion that there is some sort of pitocin-epidural-emergency c--4$$ is absurd.
I had to be induced with my firstborn due to blood pressure issues. Pitocin is a bitch but the alternative was unacceptable. Had an urgent c-section with my second, not for money but because at 35 weeks his heart rate dropped below 100 and he was in danger. I was thankful for both treatment options, that's for sure. Family members often only see bits and pieces and then create a narrative based on partial information. I'd be interested to hear the nurses' side of this story.
"Can be refused" sure, technically I bet, but under coercion and fear and pressure from experts. Don't forget the threat of CPS as well.
I don't doubt her story for an instant as I have had friends who this has happened to (well, the pitocin and c-section part, they were too scared to leave the hospital with a healthy baby AMA). A good friend's husband is an anesthesiologist and told her that if she needed a c-section there were only 2-3 other anesthesiologists he'd let treat her as he didn't trust the others. Perhaps the protocol is there not just to reduce liability but to ensure sub-par doctors don't injure patients? And the protocol itself can cause harm. My half-sister's mother died from MRSA after the stress test the hospital gave her caused her blood pressure to drop so low they couldn't operate on her infection to remove it and it killed her.
It's surprising to me that this account is a surprise to anyone. Birthing a child in the US is a terrible experience for most; parents and moms have no autonomy to birth as they want to and unfettered by all the medical interventions that almost always lead to complications. These protocols don't improve birthing outcomes, and they are expensive. Having a "natural" birth in a hospital? Almost impossible, despite want a parent wants and has prepared for. For me, the only solution was to birth at home with an incredibly competent, certified midwife. In fact, the experience was so great and so much better than the experiences of literally any of my female friends, I decided I simply would not have any more babies unless I could birth at home. So that's what I did.
And Alex, I think you need some education on midwives and doulas and births...those complications you are attempting to highlight as very real and needing doctors and hospitals, are extremely rare, and are usually caused by the very protocols and interventions we call maternal "healthcare." I'm a mom who delivered an 11 lb, 9oz baby totally naturally, two weeks late, in 3 hours, at home in my own bedroom. It was a beautiful experience with just my midwife, her helper, and my husband. No tearing, no stitches, no episiotomy, no C-section, no drugs, no vaccines at birth. We are propagandized into believing birth is a medical disease needing hospitals. A trained midwife knows well before birth when complications are likely to arise, and has a plan for that.
I went to the hospital with my first child under similar conditions, and I did wind up with a C-section. My doctor had been itching to just schedule one, she was convinced I was "too small" to give birth naturally. I'm petite but not unusually so. I wanted to try delivering naturally but was put through the same cascade of interventions. It was miserable; I have a long history of reacting unpredictably to drugs, which no one ever asked about. The painkillers did not work completely and so the C-section recovery was horrible. My second child, a half pound larger than the first, came out just fine under the supervision of a midwife who let me stand up while giving birth. It made all the difference.
The C-section was between $20,000 and $30,000, but I only paid $10 out of pocket.
With my second child, the costs were $5600 but I paid about $1000 out of pocket.
CPS are bullies, and the correct approach to a bully is a punch in the nose. That's a metaphor so keep your shirt on. Many will not like this advice but I'll give it any way. The way to (metaphorically) punch CPS in the nose is to immediately lawyer up and let the attorney do the swinging, just after you yourself inform CPS to depart because they are not needed or wanted.
It has worked for me. The classic soft totalitarians, on a crusade to "help" others, CPS fear defiance and will typically quit when it is offered by a party who is obviously not being abusive to children but who simply has been dimed or otherwise swept into the ridiculously broad CPS mandate.
At the root of this (and much else you write) is the centralization of control of individuals. From mRNA shots being forced upon people, to centralized control vis medicare/medicaid/Obamacare and the like, it all comes down to a huge decrease in individual rights and individual liberties over the lat century and a half or so. And there has been one party that is largely responsible for it because of "need" and "greed" and "envy" and "fairness."
I totally agree. During covid my daughter was hospitalized due to a massive sinus infection from her mask. She was 18 at the time and unvaccinated. She was constantly harassed by a BIG PHARMA PIMP in the hospital trying to persuade her to take a vaccine she clearly did not want. Do you know what Dr BIG PHARMA PIMP said to her? She said you are 18 and if your parents are against the covid vax they will never know or be told if we administer it to you. Nice huh? Apparently Dr BIG PHARMA PIMP believes parents no longer concerned for their children once they reach age 18. She didn’t do it and was rather disturbed how many times Dr BIG PHARMA PIMP harassed her several times a day during her stay.
How is it our medical professionals are so brainwashed into doing Big Pharma’s bidding all the time?
i have a friend who is a nurse. she has had both her children in a Brooklyn apartment with the same doula rather than expose her incoming babies to the American hospital system (she spent time in Africa with Doctors without borders and later got her PhD in mental health).
perhaps a decade ago, i was taking an Uber to visit my father in the hospital. i often had African or Haitian drivers and we always had very informative conversations. this young Haitian man's father was slightly north of 100 years old and still traveling to the USA for their annual family reunions. he had at least 80 children of all ages by varying wives and had never had consistent medical care. my driver's wife had their first child in an American hospital where they attempted to scare the living daylights out of her. they said that a C-section was the only safe way to deliver a baby. she said "WTF? my mother just squatted in the kitchen when she had me." she did not buy the fear mongering and was made to sign an AMA waiver.
she was, at the time of this cab ride, pregnant with their second child and they were returning to Haiti a few months before the birth so that she could have the baby the way nature intended. the driver's closing words to me were "Americans don't know how to have babies."
i can only imagine that things have gotten worse since then, especially after covid protocols gave hospital authoritarians a real taste for power.
While I feel for the family, as an RN I do question scenarios like this, particularly in the case of second or third (and beyond) pregnancies. If you don’t want a medical experience, then don’t sign up for a medical setting. You have a lot of other options.
Plus, where do you think all this rigid protocol and insistence upon excessive monitoring and intervention came from in the US? What opportunistic behavior are people here prone to abuse to a positively comical extent?? Or at least that *would* be comical if they didn’t WIN so often?
I’ll give you two guesses, and the second one doesn’t count. ;)
Well, yes. As I was reading this piece, I found myself thinking "Doesn't she realize that if anything goes wrong at any point in this process-- or is even suspected to have gone wrong -- the hospital can be sued to the tune of millions?". In a highly litigious environment, _of course_ elaborate protocols will have been put in place.
And as Alex noted, midwives and doulas are great -- until they're not. I had my two sons in the hospital a long time ago, and my thought at the time was that I wanted to be in a setting in which, if any complications occurred, they could be addressed immediately by people who were trained in what to do to optimize the outcome for me and my child. A lot has happened since then, and few of us are as trusting in the medical establishment as we once were -- but were I to do it all over again, I'd still choose the hospital setting, for the same reason I did years ago.
hospitals are for acute trauma only- car accidents, gun shot wounds, broken limbs. everything else is mission creep only to extend power and profit.
i'm almost 73 so on medicare. i only go to alternative doctors who don't take insurance and pay out of pocket for the kind of care i believe in. whenever i have to use a "traditional" practitioner, i never sign the responsibility for payment form until they tell me what their services will cost. that always causes a stir. if they say it will take them 2 weeks to figure out the price, i walk out of the office, telling them that we can reschedule the appointment if and when they give me a price that is acceptable. if i get an extra bill for something that was not agreed to upfront, i simply don't pay it. they do give up after awhile.
recently, the president said something about the government not being able to administer all these grand projects because it could only make war on other countries or something to that effect. i heartily agree! let's have a government that is completely OUT of healthcare, out of insurance, out of medication. let's have no mandates, no enforced protocols, no subsidies. finally, let's have a government that is too small and impoverished to start offensive wars on other countries for the sole purpose of trying to maintain a failing (and undeserved) hegemony.
if he raises the cost of medicare, i will drop it entirely. i only use it for the few things that conventional medicine is good for.
keeping fit and healthy is the best revenge against a system that views you as a milk cow.
I have given birth 11 times, the most recent being over 27 years ago, the first being over 44 years ago. Thankfully, most of the time, my doctors respected my wishes. I had one doctor who specifically told me I could refuse any test or intervention, it was my right to do so, no matter what anyone said. Bless him.
One birth was at home, intentionally. The last birth was in a hospital, with my previous midwife acting as my doula. That one was as good as the home birth. All the others were not horror stories, but were not as pleasant as the home birth.
After a few hospital births, I negotiated with my doctors to let me go home as close to 24 hours after the birth as was practical, because we simply cannot rest in the hospital. This would probably not be possible today.
I believe that the reason for all this forced intervention, protocols, and loss of choice on the part of the patients, is caused by Obamacare. One purpose of that travesty was to shut down private practices and consolidate power under medical conglomerates. They have pretty much succeeded. Very few medical practitioners are able to function independently, in most areas, due to the constraints imposed by the Obamacare monstrosity. A secondary purpose of Obamacare was to destroy private health insurance, and it is in the process of succeeding with that, although not as quickly as they wanted to. The Utopian dream of government controlled health care is a nightmare that sits too close to our horizon.
We need only to look to our neighbors to the north to see the result of single-payer, publicly funded health care. It is a disaster. MAID is the ultimate cost-cutting measure. The things we are hearing about how they are pushing it on anyone who might cost the system too much money if kept alive, are so predictable it's scary. My friends in Great Britain tell similar tales of woe, although they seem to still think their "free" health care is a good thing, while simultaneously complaining about delays in care, indefinitely postponed surgeries, and prescription mix-ups and shortages. That they can't put the cause and effect pieces together to see what's going on is a mystery to me.
I suspect the outrageous costs and ridiculous profits that are being shouted about today are intentionally in place to convince reluctant voters to agree to allow "Medicare for all."
I'm glad I'm old enough that it won't affect very many years of my time on this mortal coil. I'm very sad for my children and grandchildren.
That's exactly how the ACA was designed. They knew when the subsidies ended healthcare would be unaffordable. The regulations and requirements put into effect with Obamacare helped hasten unaffordability. This would be the perfect opportunity to achieve what the architects of Obamacare were striving for, single payer, Medicare for all. Americans saw what was happening with the NHS in Britain and the Canadian healthcare system and did not want any part of it. Outrageously expensive healthcare was the only way to override their objections. Remember, control healthcare, control the people. The covid authoritarians can not wait for total control.
I sympathize completely. What is described was to a great extent bad care. Certainly not my recent experience following the recent birth of my to granddaughters, one a premie. The overarching point of institutionalizing medicine, making it cookbook, the financial incentives that result in Institutions putting immense pressure on staff to over treat and over test is very real. I hate to beat the same old drum but it is the governmental system of over paying hospitals and freezing out other options providing equal or superior care that has resulted in this travesty. I come back to average charge and reimbursement for a problem seen in an ER is roughly 10 times the same problem seen in a hospital run clinic which is roughly twice the cost of seeing the same problem in a private office all with the same outcomes. With financial incentives such as these of course institutions are going to shunt everything to ER's and hospital care. Nothing is going to change until the root cause is addressed.
So much truth, thank you for highlighting this. There are some wonderful birthing centers in our area that are a much better fit for moms (but be careful, do your research, make sure they’re a good, experienced one, I’ve seen horror stories when it’s just some random con woman who knows nothing about delivering babies).
My controversial remark regards the conclusion. After all she eloquently wrote about what’s best fur tye baby, what nature and studies teach us about what’s good for child development… she sends the other kids to daycare??? She should look into the studies about the dangers of childcare and the amazing benefits of staying home with mom!
I recall my daughter's birth when we knew in advance there was a chance of minor complications. The hospital explicitly forbade us from using a camera to document the moment, no doubt out of fear of litigation if they did something wrong. Fortunately, my daughter was born healthy and we had a stubborn Doula in the room who pulled out her own phone to take pictures before anyone could stop her.
I wonder how much of the unpleasantly interventionist aspects of modern medicine are driven by the fear of lawsuits. I bet a lot. Certainly the cost spiral is propelled in part by the insurance that hospitals and doctors need to take on to legally practice.
Trial lawyers are huge donors to the political class. Perhaps improving our medical system needs to start with shutting down that money spigot.
Trial lawyers give far less to politicians than doctors, hospitals, drug companies, medical device manufacturers, and others in the healthcare industry. Trial lawyers and patients are wildly outgunned. That's why there are so many limits on the amount that a patient who suffered malpractice can receive. There are no limits in any other industry. If Ford sells you a defective car, you can sue them for as much as you want. If Dupont pollutes your river, there are no limits.
Once admitted to a corporate hospital, a patient is no longer a free citizen. He is a bright, shiny excuse to bill an insurance company. In 2021, I went in for open heart surgery: a valve repair. The surgery and services were top notch. And yet. I began to notice attempts to pile on devices, surgeries, procedures and pharmaceuticals that I did not need. Oh gee, whatever could be the reason. Could it be, oh, I don't know, profit? No, I don't want a pacemaker. No, I don't need to stick around in a bed "for observation." No, I don't want your rat poison blood thinner. No, I don't need more opiate derivatives. No, I don't need to go down for physical therapy (I am a runner). No, I don't need home nursing or home health care. I got out of there as quickly as possible, and possibly escaped nasty infectious diseases (e.g. MRSA) as a result. I am VERY skeptical that socialized medicine would make this better. But still. Beware. Be your own advocate, and at the appropriate moment, say no. Everyone should understand the underlying financial incentives. Having someone else pay for it (the insurance company) makes this worse, not better. I wish that the deductibles were higher, not lower, and that patients had more perceptible skin in the game.
Be your own advocate. Always.
By all accounts, socialized medicine is worse. Not financially, of course. But with outcomes. People die waiting forever. People die because administration deems the care too expensive. On and on. Different issues and by no means an improvement unless you think it is a fair trade to increase your likelihood of bad care in order to save a monthly premium.
Yeah, it was a less than ideal scenario. The call to CPS was unnecessary in my opinion. BUT, as a RN that just recently left the hospital environment (not a L&D nurse), there is a reason why things are the way they are. One, you have to understand where the protocols come from-accrediting agencies and the government. If you do not follow protocol and an inspection finds you do not, trouble for you and the hospital system. Seriously, hospitals have entire departments full of nurses and others that exist, not to care for patients, but to make sure all is in compliance. Two, we are a highly litigious society, especially in OB. If there had been a problem, an injury that caused cerebral palsy say, the doctor and all staff involved could be sued. Know what they will be asked? "Did you follow protocol?" It's not just in OB but in all specialties. Long story short, it's not just the cash register driving all this.
Well, just a different cash register. The one belonging to ambulance chasers.
As an RN, I agree with your comment completely.
As a retired pediatric RN, I confirm this is true. Hospital admins are obsessed with govt inspections and ratings as they can lose accreditation.
And if what she recounts is true (I have doubts), they strayed from guidelines. Pitocin is not required and can be refused--and it isn't given before active labor and not after a mere couple of hours.
Epidurals do not meaningfully slow contractions, and they do NOT stop them. Her assertion that there is some sort of pitocin-epidural-emergency c--4$$ is absurd.
I had to be induced with my firstborn due to blood pressure issues. Pitocin is a bitch but the alternative was unacceptable. Had an urgent c-section with my second, not for money but because at 35 weeks his heart rate dropped below 100 and he was in danger. I was thankful for both treatment options, that's for sure. Family members often only see bits and pieces and then create a narrative based on partial information. I'd be interested to hear the nurses' side of this story.
"Can be refused" sure, technically I bet, but under coercion and fear and pressure from experts. Don't forget the threat of CPS as well.
I don't doubt her story for an instant as I have had friends who this has happened to (well, the pitocin and c-section part, they were too scared to leave the hospital with a healthy baby AMA). A good friend's husband is an anesthesiologist and told her that if she needed a c-section there were only 2-3 other anesthesiologists he'd let treat her as he didn't trust the others. Perhaps the protocol is there not just to reduce liability but to ensure sub-par doctors don't injure patients? And the protocol itself can cause harm. My half-sister's mother died from MRSA after the stress test the hospital gave her caused her blood pressure to drop so low they couldn't operate on her infection to remove it and it killed her.
It's surprising to me that this account is a surprise to anyone. Birthing a child in the US is a terrible experience for most; parents and moms have no autonomy to birth as they want to and unfettered by all the medical interventions that almost always lead to complications. These protocols don't improve birthing outcomes, and they are expensive. Having a "natural" birth in a hospital? Almost impossible, despite want a parent wants and has prepared for. For me, the only solution was to birth at home with an incredibly competent, certified midwife. In fact, the experience was so great and so much better than the experiences of literally any of my female friends, I decided I simply would not have any more babies unless I could birth at home. So that's what I did.
And Alex, I think you need some education on midwives and doulas and births...those complications you are attempting to highlight as very real and needing doctors and hospitals, are extremely rare, and are usually caused by the very protocols and interventions we call maternal "healthcare." I'm a mom who delivered an 11 lb, 9oz baby totally naturally, two weeks late, in 3 hours, at home in my own bedroom. It was a beautiful experience with just my midwife, her helper, and my husband. No tearing, no stitches, no episiotomy, no C-section, no drugs, no vaccines at birth. We are propagandized into believing birth is a medical disease needing hospitals. A trained midwife knows well before birth when complications are likely to arise, and has a plan for that.
Exactly! Most of the complications are caused by the "protocols!"
I went to the hospital with my first child under similar conditions, and I did wind up with a C-section. My doctor had been itching to just schedule one, she was convinced I was "too small" to give birth naturally. I'm petite but not unusually so. I wanted to try delivering naturally but was put through the same cascade of interventions. It was miserable; I have a long history of reacting unpredictably to drugs, which no one ever asked about. The painkillers did not work completely and so the C-section recovery was horrible. My second child, a half pound larger than the first, came out just fine under the supervision of a midwife who let me stand up while giving birth. It made all the difference.
The C-section was between $20,000 and $30,000, but I only paid $10 out of pocket.
With my second child, the costs were $5600 but I paid about $1000 out of pocket.
CPS are bullies, and the correct approach to a bully is a punch in the nose. That's a metaphor so keep your shirt on. Many will not like this advice but I'll give it any way. The way to (metaphorically) punch CPS in the nose is to immediately lawyer up and let the attorney do the swinging, just after you yourself inform CPS to depart because they are not needed or wanted.
It has worked for me. The classic soft totalitarians, on a crusade to "help" others, CPS fear defiance and will typically quit when it is offered by a party who is obviously not being abusive to children but who simply has been dimed or otherwise swept into the ridiculously broad CPS mandate.
Alex, thank you so much for this advertisement for home birthing. Could you also do one for homeschooling now?
Try this!
https://gaty.substack.com/p/the-mount-rushmore-of-homeschooling
At the root of this (and much else you write) is the centralization of control of individuals. From mRNA shots being forced upon people, to centralized control vis medicare/medicaid/Obamacare and the like, it all comes down to a huge decrease in individual rights and individual liberties over the lat century and a half or so. And there has been one party that is largely responsible for it because of "need" and "greed" and "envy" and "fairness."
I totally agree. During covid my daughter was hospitalized due to a massive sinus infection from her mask. She was 18 at the time and unvaccinated. She was constantly harassed by a BIG PHARMA PIMP in the hospital trying to persuade her to take a vaccine she clearly did not want. Do you know what Dr BIG PHARMA PIMP said to her? She said you are 18 and if your parents are against the covid vax they will never know or be told if we administer it to you. Nice huh? Apparently Dr BIG PHARMA PIMP believes parents no longer concerned for their children once they reach age 18. She didn’t do it and was rather disturbed how many times Dr BIG PHARMA PIMP harassed her several times a day during her stay.
How is it our medical professionals are so brainwashed into doing Big Pharma’s bidding all the time?
i have a friend who is a nurse. she has had both her children in a Brooklyn apartment with the same doula rather than expose her incoming babies to the American hospital system (she spent time in Africa with Doctors without borders and later got her PhD in mental health).
perhaps a decade ago, i was taking an Uber to visit my father in the hospital. i often had African or Haitian drivers and we always had very informative conversations. this young Haitian man's father was slightly north of 100 years old and still traveling to the USA for their annual family reunions. he had at least 80 children of all ages by varying wives and had never had consistent medical care. my driver's wife had their first child in an American hospital where they attempted to scare the living daylights out of her. they said that a C-section was the only safe way to deliver a baby. she said "WTF? my mother just squatted in the kitchen when she had me." she did not buy the fear mongering and was made to sign an AMA waiver.
she was, at the time of this cab ride, pregnant with their second child and they were returning to Haiti a few months before the birth so that she could have the baby the way nature intended. the driver's closing words to me were "Americans don't know how to have babies."
i can only imagine that things have gotten worse since then, especially after covid protocols gave hospital authoritarians a real taste for power.
While I feel for the family, as an RN I do question scenarios like this, particularly in the case of second or third (and beyond) pregnancies. If you don’t want a medical experience, then don’t sign up for a medical setting. You have a lot of other options.
Plus, where do you think all this rigid protocol and insistence upon excessive monitoring and intervention came from in the US? What opportunistic behavior are people here prone to abuse to a positively comical extent?? Or at least that *would* be comical if they didn’t WIN so often?
I’ll give you two guesses, and the second one doesn’t count. ;)
Well, yes. As I was reading this piece, I found myself thinking "Doesn't she realize that if anything goes wrong at any point in this process-- or is even suspected to have gone wrong -- the hospital can be sued to the tune of millions?". In a highly litigious environment, _of course_ elaborate protocols will have been put in place.
And as Alex noted, midwives and doulas are great -- until they're not. I had my two sons in the hospital a long time ago, and my thought at the time was that I wanted to be in a setting in which, if any complications occurred, they could be addressed immediately by people who were trained in what to do to optimize the outcome for me and my child. A lot has happened since then, and few of us are as trusting in the medical establishment as we once were -- but were I to do it all over again, I'd still choose the hospital setting, for the same reason I did years ago.
hospitals are for acute trauma only- car accidents, gun shot wounds, broken limbs. everything else is mission creep only to extend power and profit.
i'm almost 73 so on medicare. i only go to alternative doctors who don't take insurance and pay out of pocket for the kind of care i believe in. whenever i have to use a "traditional" practitioner, i never sign the responsibility for payment form until they tell me what their services will cost. that always causes a stir. if they say it will take them 2 weeks to figure out the price, i walk out of the office, telling them that we can reschedule the appointment if and when they give me a price that is acceptable. if i get an extra bill for something that was not agreed to upfront, i simply don't pay it. they do give up after awhile.
recently, the president said something about the government not being able to administer all these grand projects because it could only make war on other countries or something to that effect. i heartily agree! let's have a government that is completely OUT of healthcare, out of insurance, out of medication. let's have no mandates, no enforced protocols, no subsidies. finally, let's have a government that is too small and impoverished to start offensive wars on other countries for the sole purpose of trying to maintain a failing (and undeserved) hegemony.
if he raises the cost of medicare, i will drop it entirely. i only use it for the few things that conventional medicine is good for.
keeping fit and healthy is the best revenge against a system that views you as a milk cow.
I have given birth 11 times, the most recent being over 27 years ago, the first being over 44 years ago. Thankfully, most of the time, my doctors respected my wishes. I had one doctor who specifically told me I could refuse any test or intervention, it was my right to do so, no matter what anyone said. Bless him.
One birth was at home, intentionally. The last birth was in a hospital, with my previous midwife acting as my doula. That one was as good as the home birth. All the others were not horror stories, but were not as pleasant as the home birth.
After a few hospital births, I negotiated with my doctors to let me go home as close to 24 hours after the birth as was practical, because we simply cannot rest in the hospital. This would probably not be possible today.
I believe that the reason for all this forced intervention, protocols, and loss of choice on the part of the patients, is caused by Obamacare. One purpose of that travesty was to shut down private practices and consolidate power under medical conglomerates. They have pretty much succeeded. Very few medical practitioners are able to function independently, in most areas, due to the constraints imposed by the Obamacare monstrosity. A secondary purpose of Obamacare was to destroy private health insurance, and it is in the process of succeeding with that, although not as quickly as they wanted to. The Utopian dream of government controlled health care is a nightmare that sits too close to our horizon.
We need only to look to our neighbors to the north to see the result of single-payer, publicly funded health care. It is a disaster. MAID is the ultimate cost-cutting measure. The things we are hearing about how they are pushing it on anyone who might cost the system too much money if kept alive, are so predictable it's scary. My friends in Great Britain tell similar tales of woe, although they seem to still think their "free" health care is a good thing, while simultaneously complaining about delays in care, indefinitely postponed surgeries, and prescription mix-ups and shortages. That they can't put the cause and effect pieces together to see what's going on is a mystery to me.
I suspect the outrageous costs and ridiculous profits that are being shouted about today are intentionally in place to convince reluctant voters to agree to allow "Medicare for all."
I'm glad I'm old enough that it won't affect very many years of my time on this mortal coil. I'm very sad for my children and grandchildren.
That's exactly how the ACA was designed. They knew when the subsidies ended healthcare would be unaffordable. The regulations and requirements put into effect with Obamacare helped hasten unaffordability. This would be the perfect opportunity to achieve what the architects of Obamacare were striving for, single payer, Medicare for all. Americans saw what was happening with the NHS in Britain and the Canadian healthcare system and did not want any part of it. Outrageously expensive healthcare was the only way to override their objections. Remember, control healthcare, control the people. The covid authoritarians can not wait for total control.
I sympathize completely. What is described was to a great extent bad care. Certainly not my recent experience following the recent birth of my to granddaughters, one a premie. The overarching point of institutionalizing medicine, making it cookbook, the financial incentives that result in Institutions putting immense pressure on staff to over treat and over test is very real. I hate to beat the same old drum but it is the governmental system of over paying hospitals and freezing out other options providing equal or superior care that has resulted in this travesty. I come back to average charge and reimbursement for a problem seen in an ER is roughly 10 times the same problem seen in a hospital run clinic which is roughly twice the cost of seeing the same problem in a private office all with the same outcomes. With financial incentives such as these of course institutions are going to shunt everything to ER's and hospital care. Nothing is going to change until the root cause is addressed.
Spent 45 years in med/surg and seen it all. None of what she wrote surprises me and she is correct.