President Donald Trump has announced that he will support a $ 5,000 baby bonus to help people convince more children.
Anu Sharma, founder and CEO of Millie, a Tech-compatible pregnancy clinic established in California, sat down with MobiHealthNews To discuss the usability of such a proposal and what needs to be done before the government tries to stimulate the birth.
MobiHealthNews: What is the response to the Trump government’s proposal to give a baby bonus of $ 5,000 in your experience to promote another baby boom?
They have sharma: The reaction was that you honestly don’t understand. If you look at the state of parenthood and birth rates, I think the basic problem is that it is really difficult to be a parent. You do not really have access to affordable childcare and paid family leave.
From a clinical point of view, the maternal health model is quite broken. From the point of view of the practice, the repayment rates for OB practices are ridiculously low. There is a Burn -Out doctor. Many practices have actually shifted from providing obstetric care.
A baby bonus of $ 5,000 does not come close to the reality of what parents need to be able to pay for babies and pay for childcare. If we saw a certain degree of success with this bonus that actually has more babies in America, I don’t think we have the practical infrastructure from the point of view of health system to support this.
MHN: Is there a realistic dollar figure that would be the sense of encouraging women to have more children?
Sharma: I don’t know if that is a legitimate question. There is a very large population of people who would like to have children, but not for whatever reason.
Part of it is that women find partners later in life, where their own fertility is not entirely where it should be when they are ready to have children. It is expensive and it is not universally covered. There is a certain group of people when they want to have children, they are at a point where they can, but it is not always feasible.
That is one side, the other side is, even if it is feasible, it is not necessarily affordable. What families are struggling with is, how do we make parenthood in America easier and how do we make it more possible for practices and care providers to thrive?
I don’t know if a baby bonus of $ 5,000 will necessarily solve the problem that people are unable to afford fertility care at the point where they are ready to have families. I don’t know if it solves the affordability problem for people.
MHN: You said that women have less chance of founding a family because of an increase in American death rates. How serious are the mother mortality?
Sharma: Maternal death rates in the US are quite high compared to our Peer countries. American mother dying rates are highest within Peer -countries. They are not just mother dying figures; It is also morbidity percentages. That speaks to the almost missers.
They can happen for various reasons. Postpartum pre -eclampsia is a big one.
The health care system will in principle stop. You deliver the baby. You go home, and they say you’ll be back in six weeks.
There are quite a number of almost -missers that happen – That number is hanging around 50,000 a year. It is not really a death number, but is an almost death number.
When you look at premature birth rates, Nicu percentages, C section percentages, anxiety and depression, postpartum depression, remains nothing good.
MHH: Why do you think the country’s mother care system is outdated?
Sharma: If you look at France, Germany, United Kingdom, the Nordic countries, Canada, frontliniezorg for pregnancies with a low to moderate risk is usually supplied by midwives.
We don’t have that here in the US [as many] midwives. It is an emerging concept.
Everyone receives OB-conducted care. OBs are scarce. They cost twice as much as midwives, but they are also trained differently. They are really the people you want if you have a need for interventional care or a risky pregnancy.
In the end, you will see much higher intervention speeds that appear in our C-Section members, when pregnancies with a low to moderate risk are provided by a different type of provider.
We also have a fairly incomplete model. When you look at the data, the way we do prenatal care is a handful visit. They are split into trimesters; They happen en route with in advance specified intervals. When things happen during pregnancies, 50% of mother mortality happen after the baby is born in the first year of life, with a high concentration in that first six -week window.
One third of [maternal deaths] During pregnancy between visits, which makes labor and delivery the safest part of the episode that is shocking at a certain level. The episodic, discontinuous one -sided approach that alone [the U.S.] Just didn’t cut it if you make it with what people really need.
There are whole chunks that are completely lacking, things such as nutritional support, support for mental health, lactation support, primary education about breastfeeding, primary education about education in children; None of these things is part of the model at all.
It is quite broken, supported by a decreasing range of ob practices that are and close under serious financial stress, so the care we have is also disappeared.
That is the larger context and background in which we are talking about creating a baby boom and expanding baby bonuses.
That is a terrible idea, and it does not calculate with the reality why people have no children.
MHN: What should the government do to stimulate the birth?
Sharma: If you look at the big whole, our birth rates have long since fallen; It is not a new phenomenon.
Part of it has to do with higher educational percentages for women, higher women in the workforce, people who live longer and give priority to different things.
A decreasing birth rate is not something that we have to be alerted by.
It is not the birth rate itself; It is what that means for the economy.
If we want to increase the birth rate and expand the basis of the pyramid, how do we unlock those population those children but cannot have children because of the inability to afford fertility care or pay life as a parent?
That comes down to things such as the infrastructure for childcare and paid family leave.
It is those things that need just as much attention, and a one -off baby bonus will not necessarily encourage people to be on the sidelines to jump on the market for babies.
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