Noting that the existing Summary of Benefits and Coverage (SBC) template is incomplete in critical ways, the National Partnership for Women & Families filed comments with the Office of Management and Budget today offering recommendations to improve it. Problems...
Statement of Debra L. Ness, President, National Partnership for Women & Families
In the last 50 years, the number of cesarean births have multiplied by seven, according to Childbirth Connection. In 1965 the C-section birth rate was 4.5 percent. In 2014, 32.2 percent of births were C-sections, making it one of the most common procedures in American operating rooms, according to Childbirth Connection.
Still, Carol Sakala, director of childbirth connection programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, a nonprofit policy group in Washington, said there needs to be more discussion about the right balance. “Competent patients have the right to make decisions on behalf of themselves and their babies.’’
Other benefits include a 9 percent reduction in the use of any pain medications, a 31 percent reduction in the use of synthetic oxytocin to speed up labor, and a 34 percent reduction in reporting a negative birth experience, according to Carol Sakala from the National Partnership for Women and Families.
The study, called Listening to Mothers III, was based on Childbirth Connection’s nationally representative survey of some 1,960 new mothers. It found that four out of five of the mothers who were warned they might have large babies gave birth to infants who were not large, and weighed less than 8 pounds 13 ounces.
Leading Maternity Care Experts Release Issue Brief Encouraging Medicaid and Private Insurers to Cover Doula Care
“When you don’t wait for labor to begin on its own, you cut short all kinds of physiological changes and preparations for birth that are taking place toward the end of pregnancy,” said Carol Sakala, the director of the nonprofit Childbirth Connection programs at the National Partnership for Women & Families. “What is the effect of cutting off those processes so casually on such a large scale?”
“We could shift this number downward,” said Carol Sakala, director of childbirth connection programs at the National Partnership for Women and Families, by helping women get “fit and ready for the challenges of labor, using a doula, being upright and moving around during labor and periodic listening to the baby’s heart patterns as opposed to continuous electronic fetal monitoring.”
A wide range of health-focused organizations — including Planned Parenthood, Physicians for Reproductive Health, the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum, the National Abortion Federation, the National Partnership for Women & Families, and the Center for Reproductive Rights — praised the effort to roll back Hyde, releasing statements on Wednesday pointing out that policy harms some of the most economically vulnerable women in the country.
“Anyone who looked closely at the fiscal 2016 Labor-HHS-Education budget that sailed through the House Appropriations Committee recently was in for a jolt. It may be impossible to overstate the many ways this legislation would take the country backward, said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
“The payments that are made are highly concentrated in that little window,” said Carol Sakala, director of the Childbirth Connection, one of the organizations that commissioned the study. Childbirth Connection is a program of the National Partnership for Women and Families, an advocacy group.
“Women are 54 percent of those purchasing coverage through the federal marketplace and would have been hurt the most by an adverse ruling … Roughly 76 million people are benefiting from access to covered preventive care, including contraceptive services,” said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
“This week, extremists in the House of Representatives seem to be firmly in charge as their fiscal year 2016 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies (Labor-HHS) funding bill advances quickly,” said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families.
Recent data show that mothers themselves may already think what the Hormonal Physiology of Childbearing report suggests. The series of Listening to Mothers (LtM) studies, a nationally-representative survey of childbearing women, shows a shift in mothers’ attitudes towards normal physiologic birth.
(Statistics provided by Childbirth Connection, a program of the National Partnership for Women & Families)
(Statistics provided by Childbirth Connection, a program of the National Partnership for Women & Families)
Statement of Judith L. Lichtman, Senior Advisor, National Partnership for Women & Families
“But voluntary measures will not be enough, given how pervasive pregnancy discrimination is in our country,” said Judith Lichtman, senior adviser for the National Partnership for Women & Families.
“Any ruling that will mean fewer pregnant women face discrimination in the workplace is good for women, good for families, and good for our economy and our country,” said Judith L. Lichtman, a senior advisor at the National Partnership for Women and Families.
