September 5, 2007
NC Near Bottom in Infant Mortality
The latest figures are out today and, once again, NC has the dubious distinction of a shameful near-bottom infant mortality ranking with 8.1 kids dying per 1000 live births. Only South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana and Mississippi managed to do worse. Maybe that could be our new motto: “North Carolina – Not as bad as Mississippi.” If that wasn't bad enough, the infant mortality rate for minority infants is more than twice what it is for white children.
We don’t have to settle for being among the last in the nation. In the 1950s NC responded to poor health rankings with one of the most innovative and successful health improvement efforts in the nation. If we could all just stop watching “Dr. Phil” and actually start doing something, we could tackle this problem and produce results. From today’s N+O article Dr. Leah Devlin says it best:
State Health Director Leah Devlin said improving the health of women and girls throughout their lives is vital to reducing infant mortality.
"Many North Carolinians lack health insurance or are under-insured," Devlin said in a statement.
"We have high rates of heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity and other chronic health problems. Our childhood poverty rates are substantially higher than in the nation as a whole, and our per-capita spending for public health is among the lowest in the nation. These problems need to be addressed if we are to reduce infant mortality and eliminate the health disparities that hit our minority populations especially hard."
Search
Previous Posts
- Top of the morning
- The value of quality early education demonstrated again in Tennessee study
- Forum on Latino children draws a crowd
- March for immigrant justice and against racial profiling today
view full archive » subscribe to feed
Web Links
- BlueNC
- Capital Beat (Greensboro News-Record)
- Deathwatch (Death penalty updates)
- Democracy NC's Link of the Day
- Equality NC blog
- Exile on Jones Street
- Health Policy Hub (The Community Catalyst Blog)
- Independent Weekly Blogs
- Isaac Hunter’s Tavern (WUNC Radio)
- Leftyblogs
- NC Conservation Network Blog
- North Carolina Economics
- Off the Charts (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
- Orange Politics
- Pam's House Blend
- Policy Points (South by North Strategies)
- Public Policy Polling
- Say Ahhh!
- Scrutiny Hooligans
- Stop NCAR (Realtor’s Assn. watchdog)
- The Arc of North Carolina Policy Blog
- The People’s Business (Fayetteville Observer)
- This Old State (Charlotte Observer)
- Under the Dome (News & Observer)
- Watauga Watch
21 Comments Add yours »
Cuba has hit upon a solution to the embarrasment of a high infant mortality rate. All prenatal services are free and mandatory, and if there is any sign whatsoever of a problem with the baby, it is aborted immediately.
I thought Jean Fisher’s article in the N&O was interesting.
Seems like money well spent.
From the DHHS press release
A radio report on this today also mentioned that infants should not be exposed to second hand smoke. Seems obvious but it has to be restated all the time. Children just fall under the chariot wheels of the free-marketeers. Too bad property rights don’t extend to children’s lungs.
“Children just fall under the chariot wheels of the free-marketeers.”
That’s just nuts.
How about “Crushed under the oppressive weight of Adam Smith’s invisible hand?”
How about “Fed, clothed, educated, and cared-for with the surpluses created by free markets?” Compare North and South Korea.
From a 2002 Congressional Research Report
Not exactly “free”. In return we get flooded with cheap cars which are damaging our auto industry which also has difficulty accessing the Korean market.
A better comparison would be the Scandinavian countries. They are able to balance regulated markets with effective government social programs. Sweden’s infant mortality rate is among the lowest in the world at 2.76. The Scandinavians also have greater social mobility than we do in the US. Even with their so-called welfare state, the Swedes are apparently creating enough surpluses to feed, clothe, and educate their citizens as well or better than the US.
If it weren’t for our American exceptionalism we might actually learn a thing or two from other countries.
If it weren’t for Scandinavian exceptionalism, you would have exactly NO examples of even superficially successful socialism to counter the massive failures of the USSR, China under Mao, North Korea, Cuba, Nicaragua under the Sandanistas, most of post-independence Africa, and numerous other third world economic nightmares.
It’s 2007 guys, the jury has long been in on the relative merits of free markets vs. socialism. Free markets by themselves are not sufficient to create nirvana, but they are more than necessary. In fact, they are indispensable.
Greg, if we had opted years ago not to invest in the freedom of South Korea, we could have saved a few dollars and protected our inefficient automobile industry a litte longer (at the expense of low-income American consumers, of course). So in a round-about, morally obtuse way, I guess you have a point.
Jim, You are dancing in circles with your red-baiting strawman.
The benevolent operation of a free market requires government. A free market without government is anarchy. Stating that doesn’t make one a socialist.
Wake up and smell the corporate incentives. We don’t have a ‘free market’ economy in the U.S. either.
Well said, Greg. Nobody is advocating modeling our economic policy after “Dear Leader.”
Nor is anyone advocting anarchy, or denying that government has a role in the economy. The whole arguement is over what that role should be, and history has proven conclusively that a limited role is generally better. Judging by your writings, you guys clearly disagree. That’s fine, but if you’re going to write things like “Children just fall under the chariot wheels of the free-marketeers†and that they are “Crushed under the oppressive weight of Adam Smith’s invisible hand” don’t blame others for concluding that you’re a little nuts.
If you’re going to write like a Soviet apparatchik you’re going to be taken for one.
The poor, minorty population you’re so concerned about gets its healthcare courtesy of the government. So why are you blaming the private market, that serves now less than 50 percent of the us population?
http://redclaycitizen.typepad.com/redclay/2007/09/healthcare-half.html
Your churning out this mendacious narrative over and over again doesn’t help improve healthcare. We need more freedom, not less.
In addition, if those infant mortality rates are coming from largely from the population that supposed to be served by Medicaid, why aren’t you blaming Medicaid for not getting eligible people into the program? And did you ever think that maybe there are other factors to infant mortality besides your pet theories about lack of socialized medicine (which are weak at their face)?
If you want to keep fighting the cold war you might want to try a different venue.
If you have something constructive to contribute on the subject of reducing infant mortality and how the free-market could help then please do share.
I agree with you Greg. It’s not enough simply to call someone a commie. Though in Jim’s defense, he was simply responding to the ridiculous invisible hand trope/freemarket wheel metaphors from above that added nothing of substance to the debate, either. Use of such language suggest a profound lack of understand about how markets work. (So shame on them both.)
That said – and to your request, Greg – there are positive free-market measures that can be taken to improve access to and quality of care:
1. Let people buy health insurance in other states to kill the BCBS monopoly and let people choose the kinds of policies they want (rather than foisting them on people with costly mandates.)
2. Move away from employer-based insurance created by the taxcode, which distorts markets and limits competition.
3. Move to consumer-driven models like HSAs that discourage rich people from charging Viagra to the pool, and everyone from going to MDs for sniffles. (In short, mitigate the expense account effect.)
4. Stop expanding children’s Medicaid which makes healthcare less affordable for everyone else, including the less affluent, lower middle class. Children are lower risk and cheap to insure, so removing them from the pool drives up premiums (which in turn causes people to self insure).
5. Reduce the 7 year protectionism of generics via patents to 5 years to shorten the window for access to cheaper meds.
These are just a few. I’ve got loads of ‘em.
Geez Max, chill. I can see hyperbole is an underappreciated comedic form at redklayklavern.
OK, I’ve had a couple beers so am fully chilled. But still waiting on some substance here… (Hell, if I wanted comedy we’d go read NCBlue. But I demand and expect top-notch thinking from Porkgressive Plus. You’re the only lefties in the state we can respect, so please: don’t let us down!)
BTW, Steve, if it will help my traffic, I’ll be more hyperbolic and ribticklin’.
That’s the spirit!
Also, clarify your pharmaceutical patent ideas. I have some ideas there myself.
Notwithstanding the fact that I asked about free-market solutions for reducing infant mortality and not broad health & insurance issues I have the following responses to Max’s comments:
1. I agree that BCBS is a monopoly but I see that as a product of the market, (having participated in more than one competing plan). I have had insurance outside state lines. It didn’t help much and gave me less recourse when the plan abruptly folded. The closest analogy that comes to mind is out-of-state sub-prime lenders holding loans originated in-state but now exempt from state remedies.
2. Agreed
3. Problematic: I don’t agree that HSAs are consumer-driven models. I think they are driven by people who want to be closer to their cash than their health. Even if I agreed with the premise I would agree with the “Viagra” observation, but not with the “sniffles”. The “working wounded” are more a danger to other people (co-workers, family members, children’s classmates and their families) than they are to themselves. People should see a doctor, even a doc-in-the-box or nurse practitioner. Some serious problems present initially as “sniffles” and should be intercepted early (especially for pre-natal women).
4. Couldn’t disagree more. (See Max Borders above: “why aren’t you blaming Medicaid for not getting eligible people into the program?:”) Adding children to a pool from Medicaid may decrease average costs of individual premiums but will increase the cost of of family insurance, resulting in fewer children and adults insured. (Also divorce rates, custody and parental issues make coverage and continuity complicated for many kids).
5. I would tend to agree but I do think drug companies should recoup their research investment. I don’t have a major problem with the 7 years but I do have a problem with the proliferation of delivery mechanisms that artificially extend patent protection beyond 7 years. (ie injected, snorted, inhaled, sublingual, skin patch etc.)
One important of increased infant mortality is the increase in premature births. Technology can prolong life without necessarily improving it. The same technology that reduces infant mortality may indeed be raising it simultaneously. This is a separate discussion.
I think that the health of the mother is critical. Most Western European countries have lower infant mortality rates than the US. They must be doing something right that we can learn from.