Foreign Policy Passport addresses this.
"So they wanna cut everything from family care to prenatal care to child nutrition. It’s like the Republican Congress is saying ‘You can’t prevent an unwanted child; you can’t get care if you do get pregnant; and we won’t give you any help feeding the kid after it’s born. But that two minutes when that skull is crowning? Your baby is the most precious thing on Earth.’"
—
JON STEWART, on the GOP’s wholesale attack on women, women’s health programs, reproductive rights and, again, women, on The Daily Show
(via inothernews)
Is it strange that I laid awake thinking about this? Especially if I’m not American? Maybe someone needs to speak “Republican”?
Let’s talk about saving taxes (which is something that Republicans love… or so we Canadians seem to think).
Let’s talk c-sections. The c-section rate in the US is almost at 1 in 3. This report from 2009 says that the number of c-sections being performed in US hospitals cost tax payers an estimated $3 billion.That’s 10 times more than the proposed funding cut for Planned Parenthood at $363 million. By offering services like Planned Parenthood, women are better informed of what the process of labour and delivery are like (re: Nothing like what you see in Hollywood), and have a better understanding of what a medically necessary c-section is.
Also, most of what Planned Parenthood provides is contraception and STI screening. Abortion services account for about 3 percent of Planned Parenthood’s services. Being a safe place for teens to get contraception also makes Planned Parenthood a tax-saving option.
This USA TODAY report is, yes, five years old, but it also states that teen pregnancies come with a tax bill of $9.1 billion. (You can download the report that the article was based on here). The authors, the Guttmacher Institute, found that:
“The children of teen mothers have higher health care, foster care and incarceration costs than those of older parents … Like their parents, they earn less as adults and pay less in taxes.”
The year this article was written (2006) saw a rise in abortions by 1 percent. However, the rate of teenage pregnancies also rose… by 4 percent.
In 2006, the US was spending as much as $147 billion on the direct and indirect costs of obesity, with childhood obesity accounting for $237 million. That’s 9.1 percent of American health spending. This report is from 1994 (ugh, I know) but it says:
About a third (26 to 41%) of obese preschool children were obese as adults, and about half (42 to 63%) of obese school-age children were obese as adults. For all studies and across all ages, the risk of adult obesity was at least twice as high for obese children as for nonobese children. The risk of adult obesity was greater for children who were at higher levels of obesity and for children who were obese at older ages.
This CDC graph shows how the rates of obesity have increased since 1994, which is when that study was published:
This is not the way to save money.
(rant over)
(via bringingupbaby)
Health care spending in rich countries:
Between 2000 and 2008 health spending per person increased by 4.2% a year on average, according to the latest data from the OECD, a rich countries’ club. Average spending over the same period was 8.4% of GDP; last decade the average was 7.3%. Technological change, population expectations and ageing populations, say the OECD, will continue to drive costs and spending even higher. In almost all countries, public expenditure accounts for the majority of health-care spending. It has increased from an average of 12% of total government spending in 1990 to a record 16% in 2008. Given the need to reduce budget deficits, governments will be looking to reduce health-care expenditure or increases taxes.
