That and the way that funding for rural hospitals has been declining for decades and more and more rural hospitals are closing. This could be avoided by a bipartisan bill to change the way in which medicaid/medicare payment rates are determined. However, insurance companies, and the far right, are, of course, working against this.
That and the point that childbirth in a hospital with all the medical protection and support for mother and child is simply something a number of people cannot afford. And even with insurance, co-pay can make a baby a ruinous venture. So they give birth at home ("like the founding fathers", err, mothers did), with maybe a midwife. Any serious complication, and child and/or mother are done for.
Another reason is the low vaccination level in the USA. At least low for a rich country.
True. Unwanted babies etc etc.... having just had my first child a little over a month ago, it makes me sad to think of it, but I also know how stressful this stressful these weeks have been for my wife and I, and can't imagine my mental state if I didn't want the baby to begin with.
...b-b-but you've got the best healthcare system in the world - it's why you pay so much. It's certainly not delivering comparable outcomes to Qatar and Lebanon for 3x and 8x the cost respectively, or 50% more than the next most expensive country.
I mean, thankfully I live in the UK, so we still have the NHS (for now). I do feel extremely sorry for our American cousins, though. Their healthcare (insurance) system is fucked.
The United States doesn't care about people, only capital.
You see it in the ruins of public education, the ruins of the common infrastructure, the innumerable tent cities where we throw our neighbors to die of exposure and police harassment for the crime of being sub-optimal capital batteries, the way we let capitalists treat their workers, etc.
Why is this story surprising?
Idiots can crow about what a "great wealthy nation of opportunity we are herp derp" but we are more of a propagandized labor camp than a society. The inhuman priorities this nation actually practices are beyond contemptible.
And nothing will change unless it's for the worse, because the capitalist's gravy pipeline is our only priority at all other's expense, and surprise surprise, they still demand more out of your ass to to attempt to satiate their insatiable greed. Lets just give you even shittier healthcare and pocket the difference in our race down into oblivion, shall we? Thats called rational self-interest!
Unsurprising. After dropping already insufficient COVID protections after two years of killing the most vulnerable adults, makes sense that morality is up for babies where new vulnerable hosts continue to be produced.
Also:
allowing multiple infections of an immune-suppressing virus,
while placing continuing high-load accute and increasing-load chronic health conditions on a health care system while
having healthcare staff decrease due to burnout and post-covid conditions
and having poorer folks with less access to the best protections (work from home, homeschool/daycare, quality mask, quality education on how to stay safe from COVID)