Mike Bloomberg Releases Plan To Tackle Maternal Mortality Crisis
Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg today unveiled his plan for tackling the nation’s maternal mortality crisis, with a particular focus on decreasing disparities in maternal health outcomes across the country for communities of color. Bloomberg announced his plan in Montgomery, Alabama, which has one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the nation.
For black women, who disproportionately lack access to affordable, quality health care, the risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes is three to four times higher than that of white women. Black women are also twice as likely to suffer from life-threatening pregnancy complications and face the brunt of implicit bias in medicine. President Trump has restricted access for women to critical health services, in Alabama as well as nationwide, making the disparities in coverage worse.
Mike Bloomberg’s plan details several initiatives designed to decrease disparities in maternal health outcomes across the country and reduce the disproportionately high maternal mortality rate among women of color, including:
Addressing the racial bias among health care providers – both implicit and explicit – by requiring doctors to have training in understanding and countering implicit bias in medical care.
Standardizing maternal mortality data collection. To address a lack of reliable data around maternal mortality, Bloomberg’s plan centralizes data collection at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and draws on the data to inform and improve standards of health care. The data will be used to establish programs to assist clinicians in identifying high-risk pregnancies.
Providing a public-option insurance plan, free of charge. While low-income women can enroll in Medicaid when they become pregnant, in fourteen states, including Alabama, the program covers new mothers for only 60 days postpartum. Mike Bloomberg’s plan would allow low-income women, who would otherwise qualify for expanded Medicaid under the ACA, to enroll in a public-option plan free of charge. Alabama has not expanded Medicaid, which in turn leaves out 314,000 people from the program.
The plan introduced today reaffirms Mike Bloomberg’s long-standing support for women’s reproductive rights. Bloomberg will work with Congress to codify Roe v. Wade into law, guaranteeing legal access to safe abortion in all 50 states. He will also partner with Congress to repeal the Hyde amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except to save the life of the mother, or in cases of incest or rape. In addition, his plan includes a pledge to abolish a new rule put into place by President Trump that bans Title X organizations from providing abortions (even if they are funded separately) and from referring patients to other abortion providers. Abolishing this rule will expand reproductive health care to four million low-income women supported by the Title X National Family Planning, and nearly 17 million more women ages 15-44 who receive Medicaid benefits.
By contrast, President Trump has gone out of his way to restrict access to abortions and access to health insurance and preventive health services. In one of his first actions as president, Trump reinstated and expanded what is known as the “Mexico City Policy,” which requires foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive U.S. aid to certify that they will not perform or promote abortion. Not only did this signal to women everywhere his intention to undermine, in every way possible, women’s right to choose, but it foretold a series of actions that Trump has pursued over the past three years to limit access to affordable, quality medical care of all kinds.
https://www.mikebloomberg.com/news/mike-bloomberg-releases-plan-to-tackle-maternal-mortality-crisis-and-decrease-disparities-in-maternal-health-outcomes?gclid=CjwKCAiA3abwBRBqEiwAKwICAy652__p_GewMuBzdH0O9RYjsl0sUYXwQl3TtFVs3hLBI9q0KiJjQxoCjTcQAvD_BwE
>By contrast, President Trump has gone out of his way to restrict access to abortions and access to health insurance and preventive health services.
Plan To Tackle Maternal Mortality Crisis = Kill the babies before they have a chance to be born… ummm, what a racist creepo.