The Business of Being Born Message Board

Dear Friends,

The Big Push for Midwives campaign is organizing a Health Care Reform Community Meeting on Saturday December 20 in Missouri, specifically on Maternity Care (and especially midwives and the Midwives Model of Care!) and they have invited the new HHS Secretary Sen. Tom Daschle to attend.  Of course, getting him to attend is another matter, and that is where you come in!

In the letter below, the Big Push explains how you can help, with an e-mail that describes the meeting and invites Sen. Daschle. You submit the information and invitation on the Change.gov website. It only takes a few minutes to cut and paste.  A lot of e-mails should get attention, and we’ll hope that THIS community meeting is one that Sen. Daschle will choose to attend.

But you’ve got to act fast!  The goal is to have 1490 individuals e-mailing by the end of Wednesday, Dec. 17!

Of course, not too many of you live in or could travel to Missouri to participate in the meeting, but that is OK. You can still follow the directions below. And, you can add your own remarks about why you want him to attend and why you are writing even though you don’t live there (such as:  I want to register my concerns about these issues….  Even though I don’t live in MO, the issues addressed in this meeting are really important for every state, including my state… Please know that women and families across the US are very concerned about the state of maternity care, and the importance of … as part of health care reform… etc.)

Read all the details below!  (This post is not really as long as it looks!)

Sincerely,
Susan Hodges, “gatekeeper”

PUSH ALERT  Dec. 2008

© The Big Push for Midwives Campaign 2008. | Legislation, NOT Prosecution. | http://www.TheBigPushforMidwives.org | JOIN US ON FACEBOOK!

Greetings Pushers!

This mission, should you choose to accept it, could help push the pile in a big way for the new Midwives Model of Care paradigm.

This past week, we learned that new HHS Secretary Sen. Tom Daschle is graciously open to attending one or more Health Care Reform Community Meetings (http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/daschle_asks_americans_to_help_reform_health_care/) as outlined at Change.gov. The window of opportunity for him to attend is for meetings held in homes and neighborhoods between Dec. 15 and 31.

Initially, there was a thought to organize as many community meetings in as many homes and neighborhoods as possible during this timeframe … “Imagine it! 1,490 people emailing in from every state in the nation to share about 1,490 different community meetings all about the Midwives Model of Care!!” …

And then the magnitude of even requesting that undertaking hit us, and we sat still a bit longer. “Okay, well then imagine we have 1,490 people emailing in from every state in the nation to share about *just one singular* community meeting all about the Midwives Model of Care!! …Many voices. One Message. Meet. Us. Here.”

Ah, yes. This sounds like fun.

Where to have it? NYC? DC?? …. Naw, the Heartland!

And so we are planning a meeting, and our great hope is that Sen. Daschle can join us. Our “Maternity Care Community Discussion in the Heartland,” is planned for 2 p.m. on Sat. Dec. 20. We have reached out to him, as well as U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, and their key staff as well, and have received early positive word from Sen. McCaskill’s office. We expect to receive confirmation from the Congressman’s office very soon. We are also
reaching out to key state and local legislators here in the Lee’s Summit area. Many other hands are making light work as we scramble to put this event together by next Saturday!!!!

NOW is the time for your urgent mission. (You can do it from any place with Internet access in the whole wide world, and Please Do As Soon As Possible!!).

PLEASE HELP US REACH OUR GOAL OF 1,490 SIGN-UPS ABOUT THE
HEARTLAND MEETING BY WEDNESDAY, DEC. 17:

1) Please go to link about the Health Care Reform Community Meetings
(http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/daschle_asks_americans_to_help_reform_health_care ) and read more about Daschle’s ear to the rail during this next two weeks.

2) Click the “sign-up here” link (http://change.gov/page/s/hcdiscussion)

3) Cut and Paste the following information into the text fields and click “Submit Form”

4) Forward this message to 5, 50 or 500 of your closest friends and ask them to repeat steps 1 through 4.

5) Do a little happy jig BECAUSE YOU PUSH IT REAL GOOD! (and hey, if you can get yourself to Lee’s Summit this Saturday, we can do another one together!)

Note: After completing the form, you will receive nearly instant email from the Obama-Biden Transition Project thanking you for signing up as a “Lead Moderator” with links to download Moderator and Participant Guides. These guides are not specific to maternity care reform but focus on larger health care reform issues.
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You’ll find boxes on the form to fill in as follows:

EMAIL: *
Insert your email address

FIRST NAME: *
Insert your first name

LAST NAME: *
Insert your last name

ZIP / POSTAL CODE: *
Insert your Zip / Postal Code

EVENT ADDRESS

STREET ADDRESS: *
509 SE Miller Street

CITY: *
Lees Summit

STATE: *
Missouri

ZIP: *
64063

DATE AND TIME OF EVENT: *
Saturday, Dec. 20 at 2 p.m.

PLEASE DESCRIBE YOUR EVENT: *
Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill and Congressman Emanuel Cleaver and their health policy staff have been invited to join us for our “Maternity Care Community Discussion in the Heartland.” The community meeting will convene at a home in Lee’s Summit to discuss one critical aspect of health care where reform is desperately needed: the current U.S. maternity care crisis.

WHAT ARE THE MAJOR AREAS YOU WANT TO DISCUSS?: *
Our conversation will address Missouri’s recent failing grade on the March of Dimes 2008 Premature Birth Report Card. Missouri ranks 34th in the nation with a 13.3% preterm birth rate.

We will also discuss the cost impacts of our current maternity care system. As the national organization Childbirth Connection reports, childbirth is the leading reason for admission to U.S. hospitals, and hospitalization is the most costly health care component. Combined hospital charges for birthing women and newborns ($75,187,000,000 in 2004) far exceed charges for any other condition. In 2004, fully 27% of hospital charges to Medicaid and 16% of charges to
private insurance were for birthing women and newborns, the most expensive conditions for both payers. The burden on public budgets, taxpayers and employers is considerable.

On the national scale, a recent American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology report stated that “Despite spending more of our gross domestic product on health care than any other industrialized country, the United States currently ranks 17th in the world in perinatal mortality rate, outcomes that, according to the World Health Organization, are largely due to obstetric causes.”

As Michael McGuire, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health-care insurance carrier, wrote recently:
“Obviously, reducing the number of premature babies increases the number of healthy babies. Not so obvious or widely known, however, is the corresponding decrease in medical costs associated with having fewer premature births.”

Finally, our meeting discussion will touch on expanding access to the Midwives Model of Care, an evidence-based maternity care model that provides mothers with not only medical support, but education, emotional support, psychological support and social support, a lot of the things proven to result in healthy birth. The Midwives Model of Care has been proven to reduce the number of c-sections and birth trauma experienced by laboring women.

A recent Washington State study, using conservative cost estimates, estimates that the state’s licensed midwives program, over two years, resulted in recoveries from Medicaid Fee for Service (FFS) alone at more than $473,000. Cost savings to the health care system (public and private insurance) is estimated at $2.7 million.

These estimates demonstrate that even the most modest favorable effect on lowering the csection rates associated with licensed midwives leads to substantial savings to the health care system, as well as lower medical risk and cost to families. What if Missouri implements such a program? How much can we save? What if ALL states implement such a program? Specific to upcoming federal legislation, what if birth centers, where many midwives practice, were added as official mandated Medicaid providers? How much can we save then? Both in financial and human costs.

WHY SHOULD THE HEALTH POLICY TEAM SEND SENATOR DASCHLE TO YOUR EVENT?: *

As a recent piece in the Boston Globe notes, health care reform “has focused intensely on two key questions: How much would reform cost and how many people would be covered? It also must address the critical issue of why the United States has such poor health outcomes despite all the money we spend.”

The first step in maternity care reform centers on recognizing that our problems go beyond the secondary issue of insurance coverage and access to care. As the Globe states, “This is not just about who gets care, but about how they’re cared for. Expanding access to a system that doesn’t work won’t change our embarrassing rankings.” Our community, our state, our nation, must immediately shift its ingrained belief “that more medical intervention, regardless of cost, is
better even when the evidence doesn’t support such a claim.”

We must improve our maternity model, as demanded by the urgent problems with maternal and infant health, excess bad outcomes (premature, very low birth weight babies), and the infant mortality gap between the races that has been widening in recent years. In 2007, new numbers from the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services showed the state’s infant death rate for African-Americans live births was more than 2.7 times the white rate. In addition, Missouri c-sections have increased by 68 percent since 1997, reaching a record high of 30.9 percent of all births.

Senator Daschle should come to the Heartland and hear the strengthening voices of mothers and families. He should sit with us as we discuss the urgency of the maternity care crisis and how the integration of the Midwives Model of Care into our states’ health care systems plays a pivotal role in improving maternal and infant health.

Senator Daschle, please join us.

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If you wish to include other stats that you have from your state in addition to the Missouri stats, please do so.

And again, thank you so much for forwarding this message on (and on and on) to any others who might accept this PushMission too!!

We truly appreciate your support for the Big Push for Midwives Campaign. Together, we are working toward our vision of quality maternity care across a continuum of birth settings and provided by licensed and certified birth attendants. We are envisioning a new model for the delivery of U.S. maternity care at the local and regional levelsat the heart of which is the Midwives Model of Care, based on the fact that pregnancy and birth are normal life processes.

Steff Hedenkamp
Home birth mom of two
Communications Coordinator, The Big Push for Midwives Campaign
redquill@kc.rr.com
816-506-4630
Lee’s Summit, Missouri