9 May 2006 - 8:41am
U.S. is near the top of baby death rates
I wonder where the self-labeled "pro-life" folks are on this one -- especially since politically they're centered in the GOP, the party that has fought for decades against any sort of universal healthcare.
Among 33 industrialized nations, the United States is tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia with a death rate of nearly 5 per 1,000 babies, according to a new report. Latvia's rate is 6 per 1,000.
"We are the wealthiest country in the world, but there are still pockets of our population who are not getting the health care they need," said Mary Beth Powers, a reproductive health adviser for the U.S.-based Save the Children, which compiled the rankings based on health data from countries and agencies worldwide.
The U.S. ranking is driven partly by racial and income health care disparities. Among U.S. blacks, there are 9 deaths per 1,000 live births, closer to rates in developing nations than to those in the industrialized world.
Oh. Maybe that explains it?
The Republicans have been big on fomenting the attitude that if people are down and out, then somehow they just deserve it. Anyone who's poor just doesn't work hard enough, is just too damned lazy, right? That's why they oppose the kinds of Christian acts I learned in Sunday school, like aid for the poor. We don't want to coddle "those people"!
And so, following the logic of the GOP -- the party of forced pregnancy in the name of "pro-life" -- these babies who are dying just have it coming. They die because they deserve it. Right?
Of course, I don't expect much of anything on this from the forced-pregnancy advocates on this one, except perhaps to respond to criticism like this. After all, in all their self-proclaimed advocacy for "babies," they really don't show much interest in babies themselves, only in embryos and fetuses and even unfertilized ova. That and the health of the insurance companies and pharmaceutical conglomerates (who are profiting quite well, thank you).
Still, it's the impoverished nations that feel the full brunt of infant mortality, since they account for 99 percent of the 4 million annual deaths of babies in their first month. Only about 16,000 of those are in the United States, according to Save the Children.
The highest rates globally were in Africa and South Asia. With a newborn death rate of 65 out of 1,000 live births, Liberia ranked the worst.
Ah, there's another reason for the right wing not to give a crap: this is "other people's problems." While we have the Global Gag Rule in place in order to appease the oh-so-ironically-labeled "pro-life" folks with an inside track to our rulers, the death of real, actual, breathing, physically autonomous babies -- the kind that are born, the kind that are persons, the kind that are here, now -- is not a matter of import to them.
In past reports by Save the Children — released ahead of Mother's Day — U.S. mothers' well-being has consistently ranked far ahead of those in developing countries but poorly among industrialized nations. This year the United States tied for last place with the United Kingdom on indicators including mortality risks and contraception use.
More unimportant news to the radical right politicians, who seem to be in an all-out foot race to outdo each other with misogynist laws that force pregnancy on women, no matter what. No, to them, what matters most is what is inside women's wombs -- not the women, and not babies.
And thus the ongoing tragedy of declining healthcare in this country continues, while any and all attempts to change that are met by the Republicans with intransigence, denial, outright hostility, lies, political scapegoatism -- remember how "welfare mothers" were supposedly destroying America? -- and healthy doses of self-righteousness.
And that's why, year after year, we can expect more Save the Children reports like this one. I don't know if the Democrats have any real answers -- the best Democratic speech I've ever heard on it was delivered by the fictional Matt Santos from The West Wing -- but we can be pretty damned sure that the Republicans will do nothing about it.
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Comments
Hear hear. They will do nothing about it, because they enabled it in the first place. Too bad about the babies dying, those poor people shouldn't be having them anyway. They don't have the sense of "personal responsibility" we rich white people have, which is why eventually we will have to have forced sterilization programs for poor non-white people and education/work camps for non-white people unemployed for over a year. That's where they're headed, the logical progression of their policies, though they refuse to admit it.
Will Democrats have an answer? Better ask, will the American people support an answer? Because inevitably, it won't be cheap and it will involve expending tax dollars on poor non-white people.
Insurance companies and pharmacuetical corporations. The system is rigged for them. (And don't believe for one minute they pay the retail rate that would be charged to you if you don't have insurance.)
If Medicare is expensive but efficient, and insurance-profit-driven healthcare is expensive but inefficient, it seems that more tax money into the solution would lead to less expensive healthcare. Remove the profit-hungry middleman who denies healthcare coverage in order to maximize ROI.
Insurance companies don't get rich paying for healthcare. They get rich not paying for healthcare.