Let’s do a brief comparison of the U.S. to the civilized world, when it comes to healthcare insurance and what actually happens when a child is born. In Switzerland, when a child is born, both the mother and the child may stay up to five days in the hospital. For even the slightest complication that time gets extended for both.
In the U.S., an insured mother and her child are entitled two days. If there is a problem with one, as was the case with my new niece (she was jaundiced and required an extra day), she is separated from the mother, who in this case herself spent the night in the hospital lobby so that she could nurse her newborn daughter, three days after having given birth.
Which would you want for your wife, sister, or daughter? U.S. or civilized? If you answered “civilized”, then you get to answer another question: who are the people who should supervise our profit-oriented health insurance industry, and where are they? I personally would like to know. By the way, here in Switzerland my family and I pay less than most Americans our ages for healthcare, and we’ve not been turned down for anything we needed (in fact we’ve never even had an argument about it). Now- does that change your answer?
That’s truly awful. I’m sorry that happened to her. I had a similar experience with RJ with jaundice, but I was given a cot in his room. The hospital staff assumed that I would be with him 24/7 and assumed that I would be breastfeeding and everything revolved around that. I can see that all going out the window, however, if the insurance company got fussy. Insurance shouldn’t rule health care decisions but it clearly does. Also, my experience with RJ was 9 years ago.