US Maternal Mortality Rate Exemplifies Moral Bankruptcy of Our Health System

My friend, Dr. Don Frey, recently published America’s DWP Crisis: Dying While Pregnant (DWP) on his blog, “A Family Doctor Looks at the World”. It leads with shocking and distressing statistics about the US maternal mortality rate, which has long been the highest in the “developed world” and has been steadily increasing. Citing a recent article in JAMA, Trends in State-Level Maternal Mortality by Racial and Ethnic Group in the United States (LG Fleszar, AG Bryant, CO Johnson, July 3, 2023), he  points out that in the 20 years from 1999 to 2019 US maternal mortality more than doubled (it actually went up 2.5 times):

In every corner of the country, for every ethnic group, outcomes worsened.  By 2019, deaths per 100,000 pregnancies (the benchmark measure) had increased from 12.7 to 32.2.  For Black and American Indian women, the picture was much worse.  Their mortality skyrocketed to 55.4 and 49.2, respectively.

And this doesn’t even include deaths from accidents and homicide – the latter being the #1 cause of death for pregnant women in the US!

Let’s stop and think about that. In the rest of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, = wealthy) countries maternal mortality is going down. For the most recent reported years, it ranges from about 1.6 to 8.8, with most below 5. When we were at 12.7 we were way out of the picture. Now we are at 32.2! And our rates for minority women are like poor countries! Even though the maternal mortality rate is high and rising for all races and ethnicities, it is made even higher by the ridiculously high rates for some populations. In what conceivable way could this be compatible with the US having “the best healthcare in the world”, or anything approaching it? Only if you accept the definition of “well, the best healthcare is available for some people, who can afford it, but not even for most Americans”.

Dr. Frey points to several reasons why our “DWP” (and our dying-while-recently-pregnant, ie, post-partum) rate is so high, and they are valid, and addressing them would certainly significantly lower it. The major one is what we often refer to as “the social determinants of health”. This is a fine term, except it has almost become routine to cite them while we, as a country, continue to do little or nothing to address them. People are much more likely to have poor health status if they are financially poor, poorly nourished, poorly housed, poorly educated and live with ongoing danger and the fear that comes from it. And when those bad things happen in childhood, their risk continues higher for the rest of their lives. We call this “ACEs”, Adverse Childhood Events, and the higher number and degree of ACEs, the worse the outcome for not only those children but for the adults that they will become. Thus a person who grew up poor is likely to have worse health status as an adult than a neighbor who did not grow up poor, even if they end up with similar incomes and lifestyles. In addition to the ACEs that have their origin in poverty, there are others, ranging from growing up in a family with adults who abuse alcohol and other drugs, to parents’ divorce, to death of a parent, to physical and sexual abuse, that can occur in any socioeconomic group.

Dr. Frey also cites the number of states that have passed – and implemented – “anti-woman” laws, usually under the guise of being “anti-abortion”. While the legislators who propose and vote for them, and the state governments implementing them, would deny that they are anti-woman, the facts speak otherwise. A good example that Dr. Frey discusses, is

Last year in Missouri, for example, the legislature debated whether to outlaw surgery for ectopic pregnancies (an embryo that implants in the fallopian tube instead of the uterus), even though such pregnancies are 100% non-viable.  Apparently, the near-certainty of a mother’s tubal rupture, internal bleeding, sepsis, and death, wasn’t particularly important.

That law has not passed (so far) but many others have so limited access to abortion that women have to travel very far, have waiting periods, get illegal abortions, and otherwise risk their lives. Despite the ostensible justification for anti-abortion laws is to protect the “unborn”, the result is to increase the risk to fetuses, newborns, and their mothers. Dramatically.

There are also medical and healthcare factors that contribute to the maternal mortality rate in this country. As much as the social determinants of health, and anti-abortion anti-woman laws, contribute to the problem, medical care can make a difference. But too many women are not able to access good medical care for their pregnancies and births, in the prenatal and especially in the post-partum period. Among the important factors are the number and type of providers, geographic distribution of those providers, preference of providers for the kind of care that they want to do (or not do), and the ownership of practices and hospital by corporations that are interested mainly in money-making.

Let’s look at providers. Usually we think of obstetricians (OB-GYNs) as the people who deliver babies. And they do. Or at least many of them do. Actually, a minority, decreasing in % as they age. Doing gynecologic surgery is much more lucrative, and doesn’t require getting up at all hours to do deliveries. Plus, like most specialists, they are concentrated in urban (but not poor or inner-city) and suburban areas. So access to them is limited, especially geographically and financially. Certified Nurse-Midwives (CNMs) and family physicians also deliver babies, but often have the same “lifestyle” disincentives. Nurse-midwives are by definition about delivering (or “catching”) babies but usually are subservient to the dictates of the OB-GYN community. OBs probably do not mind if CNMs -- or family physicians -- deliver babies where the OBs do not want to be (rural and inner-city areas) but training programs may not have enough deliveries to allow them to learn. While nurse-midwives are a separate profession, their training may not strongly encourage them to assert themselves in practice.

And there is huge gap is in post-partum care. It is not uncommon for OBs (and, perhaps, others) to believe their job is done when the baby emerges, or at least when the woman is discharged. But as Dr. Frey’s piece points out, a very large number of maternal deaths take place in the post-partum period, up to 6 weeks after delivery, from bleeding, infection, and other causes that could be identified with the kind of close follow-up that too frequently does not occur. Not to mention identifying the risks for homicide (and suicide) in the situation in which the women lives.

Finally, but far from least important, is the structure of the medical care system. I have written extensively in previous blog posts about how hospitals and medical practices are run as businesses, to make money, rather than as facilities dedicated to improving the health of communities and the people in them. Birth, and the accompanying circumstances including maternal mortality, make a particular case. The businesses, as well as the physicians who work for them, are interested mainly in providing care when and where it is relatively easy and most profitable. This is understandable, but it is unacceptable. It is, at bottom, the cause of all the other problems. Receiving care for childbirth –including the prenatal and postpartum periods, as with all necessary medical services, should not be treated as luxury goods.

It may be OK that some people have a Lexus or Tesla, others a Toyota or Chevy, and still others an old clunker, while many have to walk or ride the bus. But it is not ok for healthcare, and specifically not childbirth. Women need to have access to excellent care no matter how much money they have or where they live.

That they do not is yet another indictment of a system built on profit rather than health.

Our health is going downhill: poor public health and poor attention to the social determinants

“Our health is going downhill” shouts a headline in the Kansas City Star, January 4, 2009. The local take of this article, by Alan Bavley, was the poor performance of Kansas and Missouri, the two states served by the Star, on the 2014 report on America’s Health Rankings, published by the United Health Foundation, the longest-running ranking of public health status in the nation, since 1990. Bavley emphasizes that both states have dropped significantly in those rankings; Kansas was 12^th in 1990 and is now 27^th; Missouri was 24^th in 1990 and is now 36^th.

This leads to a lengthy discussion of why both states have dropped, mainly attributed to a lack of investment in public health, and how there is a geographic disparity, with states on the coasts doing overall better than those in the Midwest: “What explains this dramatic difference between the coasts and the Midwest is broad investments on the coasts in things that make communities healthy,” Bavley quotes Patrick Remington of the University of Wisconsin. What this misses, however, is the even worse news that is hidden by “rankings” data. While in rankings of states there will always be a #1 (in this case, Hawaii) and a #50 (you guessed it, Mississippi) this hides the fact that, overall, states have gotten worse over this 25-year period. The graphs in the print edition of the Star (not included in the on-line edition) show the decrease in rankings noted above for the two states over time. However, on the “America’s Health Rankings” website one can not only look at the map showing relative state rankings but also click on each state and see how its absolute health ratings have changed over time.

Hawaii, ranked #1 in 2014 (Vermont is ranked #1 for the whole 25-year period), has nonetheless had its health status drop quite dramatically since 1990, while Mississippi, #50, has actually slightly improved. Locally, Kansas’ health status has dropped significantly consistent with its slippage in the rankings, but Missouri’s, after a big dip in the intervening years, is about the same as it was in the mid-1990s, despite its lower ranking. How can this happen? How can Missouri drop 12 places in the rankings despite having about the same health status if the top-ranked states are getting worse? The only explanation is that the gap was even greater in the past, and that some states in the middle, such as Illinois (#30) and Pennsylvania (#28) have gotten better while Missouri has stayed the same. Hawaii has dropped from a rating of +0.7 to +0.3, while Mississippi has gone from -0.4 to -0.3. Dr. Remington’s comments may be accurate, but they were more accurate in 1990, and since then states have seen a race to the middle, if not the bottom, in terms of public health.

The rankings above are the “all outcomes” rankings from the United Health Foundation studies. They are composed of several subcategories. One component lowering these overall outcomes is the obesity rates, which have risen nationally from 11.6% in 1990 to 29.4% in 2014 (!) as well as in every individual state. Diabetes has risen nationally from 4.4% to 9.6%. Physical inactivity has stayed relatively constant, but distressingly high, at nearly 75%. On the other hand, the last measure, smoking, has gone down nationally from 29.5% to 17.6%, but has tended to stay the same over many years more in lower-ranked states, such as Mississippi, Missouri, and even Kansas.  The study ranks senior health separately, but this tracks pretty well with overall health; Hawaii is the best, Kansas is 25, Missouri is 42, and Kentucky replaces Mississippi (#47) as the worst. The study also examines rankings for a variety of other characteristics, some of which are different for the overall population and for seniors. They include chronic drinking (seniors), binge drink (all adults), depression (seniors), etc., as well as societal measures which might impact or “confound” health status including education level, percent of “able bodied” (no disability) adults and percent of children in poverty.

The study also provides us with information on health disparities, obesity levels by different sub-populations, based on education, race/ethnicity, age, gender, urbanicity, and income. Two non-surprises: the South and South Central regions do the worst, and the problem is greater for those with lower education, non-white race/ethnicity, and lower income; urban status and age have less impact. In terms of educational impact on health disparity (the difference between the highest and lowest educated in terms of health status), things change: Hawaii is still #1 but Mississippi is #2, while California is #50! Unfortunately, for many of the states with both low overall health status and low disparity, it means that even the better-educated have poor health status.

So what do we learn? Yes, as Dr. Remington points out, some parts of the country generally do better than others (although identifying these as the Northeast , West, and North Central  regions is more accurate than saying “the coasts”), and the South and South Central regions tend to be worse. Yes, as Mr. Bavley highlights, both Kansas and Missouri have significantly slipped in the relative rankings. But we also see the whole country getting worse, particularly with regard to conditions such as obesity and diabetes. And we see the most dramatic drops in certain states, not only Kansas but Wisconsin (down from +.38 to barely positive at all, +.07). The people interviewed for the Bavley article in Kansas and Missouri, as noted above, cite inadequate, and decreasing, spending on public health as the reason.

It is certainly one of the big reasons, along with a consumer society that encourages consumption of high-calorie, low nutrition foods. And a car-based society that makes exercise a specialty activity, more available to some than others, rather than part of life. And a terrible economy where a shocking number of people don’t have jobs and others have to hold down two or more to make ends meet so have little time for exercise. The other huge reason are those “social determinants of health”; the impact of poverty, racism, poor education, inadequate housing and food. The social structure and social support for the most needy in the US has never been adequate, and is eroding, more in some states than in others, sometimes on purpose (because of political beliefs) and sometimes by a (possibly) more benign neglect.

Some of it is the chronic problem of public health, that its successes are the absence of disease and thus less obvious. It is easier to feel grateful for treatment of a disease we have contracted than, say (as I have often said before) to be grateful each morning that we don’t have cholera because we have clean water. It is, perhaps for some, easier to think we don’t need to vaccinate our children when diseases that the vaccines prevent are no longer in evidence. But it is a fatally flawed analysis. When a good has resulted from doing effective preventive efforts, the solution is to keep up our efforts, whether vaccination or public health.

And cutting back on our social safety net is a good prescription for worse health.

The political campaign and the future of health reform

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The headline story in the June 28, 2010 issue of the Kansas City Star, by Dave Helling and Steve Kraske, is “Mailings turn aggressive”. It is about direct mail campaigns by those seeking elective office, how they have become a major part of the campaigning, and how the content is almost entirely negative – and sometimes hard to believe. For example, a state legislator running for Congress has a mailer attacking his primary opponent as a “Nancy Pelosi Democrat”, although the only obvious similarity this “staunch conservative” former legislator has with Ms. Pelosi is that they are both women.

The more interesting aspect is not the attack aspect of the ads, but that most of the non-attack “positive” campaigning, touting the candidates’ strengths and thus implicitly responding to attacks, is (among Republicans) to emphasize their negativity. Jerry Moran, a Republican congressman from Kansas’ “Big First” district is running against Todd Tiahrt, congressman from the 4th district (Wichita), for the Senate seat of Sam Brownback (who is odds-on favorite to be our next governor). Both have essentially the same, straight-down-the-Republican-line voting record, but Tiahrt has accused Moran of being less conservative. A recent Moran ad indicates that he fights for Kansas and then lists all the things he has opposed – which is essentially everything that the Obama administration has done. Moran is a nice, personable man and presumably has some good positive ideas, but apparently in the campaign it is not cost effective to promote them. (Note that the Tiahrt campaign takes the same tack, except when attacking Moran for not being conservative enough.) In the Republican primary proudly embracing charter membership in the “Party of NO” is apparently the name of the game, It is possible that in some parts of the country, candidates in the general election will feel pressure to say what they are for, but only if absolutely necessary. In Kansas, where the Republican nominee is pretty much guaranteed victory in most venues, it probably won’t.

In a recent article in Health Affairs, “The political challenges that may undermine health reform”[1], Theda Skocpol ties some of these trends to the future implementation of health reform. She accepts that there will be Republican gains, but also discusses the ways in which Democrats will likely respond, hoping to blunt those gains and prevent a complete Republican takeover of Congress. In its absence, she notes it is likely that most of the part’s of PPACA will be implemented, slowly and quietly, although some of the parts most likely to engage support (elimination of discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions on the individual market and allowing children to stay on their parents’ policies until 26) are front-loaded, going into effect this year. Among the most interesting things she says (to me, a non-political scientist), is that “Political scientists have long know that Americans are what is called ‘operational liberals’; they like specific government benefits. Yet these same Americans are also ideologically conservative, when arguments about government versus the free marked are posed in general rhetorical terms.”

Actually, this makes it almost sound like Americans are “operationally selfish”. Indeed there are many who are, like the family physician I knew in Texas who would mostly rant against the liberals in Washington and the need to elect more conservative Texans, until, in a cost-saving measure pushed through by those fiscal conservatives, the government delayed sending out Medicare payments to physicians. That was intolerable to him! Dr. Skocpol continues: “That is why we will see Republicans doing all they can to keep the argument at the systemic level through early 2012, when they hope to elect a president who will support repeal or make fundamental changes in the 2010 legislation.” No question that arguing against Big Government is going to win more votes than opposing Medicare, or Social Security. And few of the reliably conservative Republican farmers in Kansas (or elsewhere) are going to be won over by arguments against agricultural subsidies. In Missouri, which has more Democrats than Kansas but has a legislature controlled by Republicans, a statewide referendum is about to take place which would prohibit the federal government from forcing people to purchase health insurance. It is being sold with “freedom” arguments, and might well be unconstitutional, but it will be interesting to see how people vote. When turnout is light, the poor and uninsured are less likely to turn out than those who, like the bill’s legislative sponsors, already have insurance; in particular older voters, already receiving Big Government Socialized Medicine Medicare are likely to vote.

While there is much to criticize in PPACA (done very well by John Geyman, “Hijacked: Stolen health care reform V” in the Huffington Post), there is definitely some good. The insurance companies have backed off their threats to not cover people (or at least children) with pre-existing condition, suggesting that people will begin to see some real benefits. The real issue is seen in Dr. Skocpol’s final sentence, above; the Republicans are running on general conservative principles, but should they gain power they will implement a very anti-regular-people agenda, as was done under the Bush administration. This is not limited to health care; while “everyone” (me, for sure!) hates the bankers who brought on the financial crisis (see Maureen Dowd in the NY Times, July 28, 2010: “Washington gave the Wall Street banks billions, and, in return, they stabbed us in the back, handing out a fortune in bonuses to the grifters who almost wrecked our economy”), the Republican party leadership, far from punishing them or reining them in, has tried to block legislation that would even gently restrict their most outrageous activities.

If we are lucky, maybe voters in Missouri and in other places will show that “operational liberals” who “like specific government benefits” are not all like that Texas doctor, and will also support specific benefits that help others. We have seen many polls showing that a majority of Americans favor universal health care even for all, so the sense of common purpose is not dead. Maybe they won’t, but we can hope.

[1] Health Affairs, July 2010; 29(7):1289-91.
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