January 16th, 2011 by Linda Burke-Galloway, M.D. in Health Policy, Opinion
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When the Nebraska lawmakers voted to end Medicaid prenatal care for approximately 1,500 women, their unborn babies paid the ultimate price.
Any labor room hospitalist who is responsible for the care of unassigned pregnant women will tell you that it is far easier to take care of pregnant women who have had prenatal care than it is to take care of women who haven’t. The recent vigil of the Equality Nebraska Coalition in front of their state capitol to honor five dead babies whose death can be related to the lack of access to prenatal care speaks volumes.
On or about February of 2010, Nebraska expectant mothers received a “Dear John” letter from Nebraska’s Health and Human Services stating that their pregnancies were no longer covered under Medicaid. It appeared that the rationale for making such a drastic decision involved a resistance of state politicians to pay for medical services of “illegal immigrants.”
However, when one reads the comments on a popular website called Baby Center.com, the pregnant women who were affected were U.S. citizens who were college students, wives of husbands who had lost their medical insurance, and unemployed women. Eventually all the women were able to receive government-sponsored healthcare coverage, but the panic preceding their reinstatement was palpable. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Linda Burke-Galloway*
September 9th, 2010 by Steve Novella, M.D. in Better Health Network, Health Policy, News, Opinion, Quackery Exposed, Research
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There’s an AIDS epidemic in Africa, and efforts to fight it are hampered by the endemic social problems of that continent. Chief among them are the lack of sufficient modern health resources, the spread of destructive rumors and myths about HIV/AIDS, and even the persistence of HIV denial in Africa (although this last factor is better than in the past).
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the International HIV/AIDS Alliance are teaming up with the Traditional Health Practitioners Association of Zambia (THPAZ) to address the first problem –- the lack of health services.
Most Zambians use traditional healers for primary healthcare. The WHO has therefore decided to utilize traditional healers in the fight against AIDS. There are interesting pros and cons to this policy, but it must first be recognized that there is no ideal solution to the problem. The resources to provide optimal modern health care to treat and prevent HIV/AIDS (which would need to include a massive education program) in Zambia and the rest of Africa simply do not exist. One might argue that the world should provide those resources, but let’s put that issue aside and focus on what to do in the meantime. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Science-Based Medicine*
When the Nebraska lawmakers voted to end Medicaid prenatal care for approximately 1,500 women, their unborn babies paid the ultimate price.
