12 Questions Republicans Need to Answer on Infant Mortality in Ohio

 

Fresh off passing a budget that will increase Ohio’s infant mortality rate, Sen. Shannon Jones is touring the state with the Senate Medicaid, Health & Human Services Committee.

In 2009, the Ohio Department of Health formed the Ohio Infant Mortality Task Force (OIMTF) to address our infant mortality rate, which is currently 3^rd-highest in the nation; our infant mortality rate among African-Americans is the highest in the nation. (In 2009, we were the 12^th-highest. Go Team Kasich!)

The OIMTF made a 10-point recommendation to address the problem, but the Ohio budget systematically undermines each of the 10 recommendations. There’s a chart at the bottom of the [link page] with more detail.

They’ll be hearing “the concerns of constituents… regarding infant mortality rates and health disparities.”

That’s convenient. Here are some sample questions to ask Sen. Jones when she comes to town.

• Early prenatal care is the most effective way to reduce infant mortality, but almost half of Ohio women are uninsured when they become pregnant. Expanding Medicaid would mean that all pregnant Ohioans can get immediate prenatal care without seeking reimbursement. Sen. Jones, how you do propose to lower the infant mortality rate without expanding insurance coverage to all Ohioans?
• In 2009, ODH recommended expanding pre-pregnancy gynecological services. The most popular provider of these “family planning” services is Planned Parenthood, which every year sees 1 in 6 Ohio women. Sen. Jones, you just voted for a budget to take away funding from Planned Parenthood, raising the price of these family planning services. Does that mean that you disagree with the recommendation that women talk to a gynecologist before they get pregnant?
• 10 more at the link below…

12 Questions Republicans Need to Answer on Infant Mortality in Ohio

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Diagnosis - Insufficient Outrage - NYTimes.com

You don’t often see a good rant of moral outrage regarding health care in the Times, so here you go!

RECENT revelations should lead those of us involved in America’s health care system to ask a hard question about our business: At what point does it become a crime?

Diagnosis - Insufficient Outrage - NYTimes.com

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Unpacking The Meaning Of ‘Rationing’: A Response To Dowd And Allison – Health Affairs Blog

The Dowd and Allison article appeared in Health Affairs,  and fortunately Uwe Reinhardt has analyzed it in a reality-based context. An excerpt:

The view that private markets — whether or not perfectly competitive — ration goods and services in scarce supply apparently is not shared by Dowd and Allison when they write:

“…rationing involves limits on consumption that are (1) set by someone other than the consumer (such as the supplier) with (2) the intent of limiting choices that some consumers otherwise would be willing and able to make.”

So according to Dowd and Allison, rationing occurs only when limits are placed upon choices that some potential buyer of a good or service would otherwise be willing and able to make, and I emphasize here the words “and able.”

For example, if for some reason government intervened in a reasonably price competitive market for some health care good or service that is in limited supply — e.g., a vaccine — to allocate that scare item to members of society on the basis of some criterion other than price and the recipients’ ability to pay, it would be rationing. On the other hand, if that limited supply were allocated among members of society on the basis of price and ability to pay, and on that basis individuals were denied access to that good or service, that might possibly be an “economic injustice”, but it would not be rationing.

Dowd and Allison certainly are free to posit this as their definition of rationing. They should not assume, however, that their definition is universally shared, even among economists, nor should they assume that in the debate on health policy the more expansive definition of rationing, including price-rationing, is abusive.

Unpacking The Meaning Of ‘Rationing’: A Response To Dowd And Allison – Health Affairs Blog

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