Baby Steps: Saving Some Change $$ In Making Some Changes

With all the recent talk about change and health care reform, this seems to me like a good time to talk about pregnancy reform, and the health care system. Health care costs are skyrocketing, this we know for sure.  So let’s break it down and see if we as a group of smart women can come to some conclusions and maybe some possible solutions to do our part in maybe saving the health care industry, the insurance companies, and the nation some very valuable health care dollars.

Let’s look at ultrasound. When I was pregnant twenty-four years ago, I was sent for one ultrasound. I have no idea why I needed an ultrasound, I never questioned going for the ultrasound and no one ever mentioned any possible risk involved with having an ultrasound.  Actually I believe the reason for the ultrasound was to confirm the fact that I was pregnant.  I needed an ultrasound for that?  I woke up one morning to find my boobs three cup sizes bigger then when I went to bed the night before, of course I was pregnant! (and P.S. my pregnancy boobs were fabulous!) And wouldn’t a blood test show the same result and what ever happened to the rabbit test?? Oh wait! never mind, I just remembered PETA.

In 1993 U.S.A. Today ran an editorial stating: “Baby’s first picture a $200 sonogram shot in the womb is a nice addition to any family album. But are sonograms medically worth $1 billion of the nation’s scarce health care dollars.” Hello!! That was 1993 when most of us were getting one maybe two at most sonograms. My average client today is having three minimum and up to seven per pregnancy, sometimes more if you are over 35 (AMA Advanced Maternal Age!! Give me a break!) and, sometimes even more if you are carrying multiples. What are all these sonograms costing the health care system in 2009? And who is paying for all this testing and why are the insurance companies allowing so many per preggo?  While most of the sonograms are not even considered medically necessary, they have become just routine. Well, there are two reasons that come to my mind one is doctor liability and, two this one is the clincher as far as I’m concerned, testing, testing and more testing adds up to more insurance billing. Other than having a “C” section, sending you for more and more testing is another way of making more money in Obstetrics.  In the same USA Today article a United States study released that same week found that the sonograms that doctors routinely perform on healthy pregnant women don’t make any difference to the health of their babies. Well all these years later we realize that, that may not be true, but even if that was so, then why are we having so many per pregnancy?  If we all agreed to having sonograms/ultrasounds only when we felt there might be a problem, we would be saving billions and billions of dollars a year. A definite impact could be made in helping to bring down insurance costs, helping to make health insurance more affordable. Aside from the cost of all this testing mostly unnecessary, I implore you, no I beg!!! you to please read the three articles I have linked on the site about the possible risks involved in ultrasound. Agree or disagree is not the point you need to be aware so that you can at least make better decisions for you and your baby.

This is a little excerpt from Sarah Buckley’s, Prenatal Diagnosis: Prenatal diagnosis represents incredible and continuing advances in technology, yet a sleight of hand—a trick, perhaps—is being played on pregnant women. We are told that prenatal diagnosis will increase our choices, but, as these tests become more available, women are feeling that they have less choice to refuse the testing. We already are, through social attitudes, individually responsible for our children’s development, and now we also are becoming responsible for producing a healthy baby at birth.

As one woman comments, “I knew it was my responsibility to make sure I was not going to give birth to a handicapped child. But that meant taking the risk of losing a healthy baby. I am responsible for that too.”

Finally, as we look more deeply, the parallels between prenatal diagnosis and medicalised childbirth become increasingly obvious. Both industries are centered on high technology and its superior knowledge, and both consider women’s own feelings and instincts about their bodies and their babies to be of lesser importance.

Women who choose either path are at risk of a cascade of intervention—from induction to caesarean or from screening to abortion—with pressure to conform to medicalised ideas of “the right decision” at each point. As one woman notes, “…once you’ve got onto the testing trap you have to get to the end.”

Where does this end take us, as individuals and as a society? Does prenatal diagnosis represent liberation or the beginning of a slippery slope towards selecting babies on the basis of socially acceptable characteristics? How will the “new genetics” impact prenatal diagnosis, with the huge amount of information that will soon become available about our unborn babies? And does it…make every woman feel that her pregnancy is “tentative” until she receives reassuring news?

The answers to these and other questions are as yet unknown, but this technology is certain to become more sophisticated in the coming years and our choices more complex. Mother Nature, like many women who are enrolling in these tests, does not know whether to laugh or cry.

— Sarah Buckley
Excerpted from “Prenatal Diagnosis,” Midwifery Today

And as the technology advances so does the health care costs. I’m not knocking the medical community by any means. I am grateful for all of the advances but if over 90% of us go on to have a normal what is considered an uneventful pregnancy why are we subjecting ourselves to all this testing. What the hell are we looking for? My feeling is (and more and more of you are sharing this feeling and some even refusing some of the routine testing even refusing the amnio) that after a certain point in the pregnancy when there is no turning back, you have decided to have this baby then there is nothing else you need to know. A sonogram or ultrasound might tell you something that you don’t want to know and nothing can be done to change the situation, leaving you a stressed out mess for the duration of the pregnancy and possibly causing more harm to the fetus because of your medically induced stress (recommended reading Dr. Verney’s, The Secret Life of the Unborn Child). Here’s what I recommend you do, call your insurance company and tell them that in lieu of the three to five ultrasounds that they are so willing to pay for, at a cost of $250 to $500 each, that instead you would prefer that they pay for your prenatal massages at an average cost of $75.00 a massage, if your having them at my office to about $90.00 on average elsewhere, you shouldn’t be paying more then $75.00, and stay out of the spa’s during your pregnancy. You need to find a Certified Prenatal Therapist. Not only will this save the insurance companies a bundle, but the extra benefit is that you and baby will be, healthier, happier, less back, leg and overall body discomfort and more hormonally balanced (that alone makes it worth it!) and less stressed out for not having to undergo all this unnecessary testing.

Here’s the bottom line and all you really need to know, that no matter what the outcome may be, is that you are and will be strong enough and able on every level to handle whatever God the Universe or how ever you want to look at it puts your way. We always say God never gives us more than we can handle, well is this true or not? Trusting in yourself, trusting in your body and trusting in your outcome equals freedom and peace of mind, that is while you still have a mind before all the kids are born!
ML

Remember every road taken starts with one little step! Step away from the ultrasound machine!