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I assume the OP is suggesting that pregnant woman in the United States should seek care in Cuba. The OP must never have seen a roach infested Cuban medical facility. EEEEEEEW.
Thankfully, American governmental agencies have controls and regulations for cleanliness of the hospitals in the US (jcaho).
Maybe it has something to do with the large number of drug addicted women in the US who give birth to children and then leave the children alone for hours on end.
Maybe you should do a little research instead of blaming the victim.
Read my post. I am not talking about infant mortality but about average life expectancy and under 5 mortality. I am willing to concede differences in data collection for infant mortality but the USA doesn't do too well in the other areas either.
The US is doing just fine with regards to life expectancy.
"But life expectancy is not dependent on just medical care. For example, Texas A&M health economist Robert Ohsfeldt and health economics consultant John Schneider point out that deaths from accidents and homicides in America are much higher than in any other of the developed countries. Taking accidental deaths and homicides between 1980 and 1999 into account, they calculate that instead of being at near the bottom of the list of developed countries, U.S. life expectancy would actually rank at the top."
"In 2005, there was a more than threefold difference in infant mortality rates by race and ethnicity, from a high of 13.63 for non-Hispanic black women to a low of 4.42 for Cuban women."
Yes, Cuban women have the lowest infant mortality rate in the entire country. In fact, Hispanics in general actually have a lower infant mortality rate in this country than white people. The overall Hispanic infant mortality rate is around 5.5 per 1,000. Which is about 2.5 times lower than black women.
If you look at infant death rates by state and race. New Jersey has an infant mortality rate of only 3.5 for whites. Which means the white infant mortality rate in New Jersey is roughly equal to Norway. And quite a bit better than France, which has an infant mortality rate of 4.1. Canada is at 5.3, and Britain is at 5.38.
In reality, there doesn't seem to be a coherent cause for the gap in infant mortality rates. For instance, Puerto-Ricans have almost twice the rate of Cubans, and about 60% higher than Mexicans. Yet, all these groups have similar rates of poverty and access to healthcare.
It seems to me that the infant mortality rate gap in this country probably is not caused by poverty or access to healthcare. Most likely it is caused by things like the age of the mother, culture, drug use/abuse, and genetics.
"But life expectancy is not dependent on just medical care. For example, Texas A&M health economist Robert Ohsfeldt and health economics consultant John Schneider point out that deaths from accidents and homicides in America are much higher than in any other of the developed countries. Taking accidental deaths and homicides between 1980 and 1999 into account, they calculate that instead of being at near the bottom of the list of developed countries, U.S. life expectancy would actually rank at the top."
"However as Carl Bialik, the invaluable Wall Street Journal "Numbers Guy" columnist, notes Ohsfeldt and Schneider's analysis does not account for the fact a better health care system would have saved more accident victims and thus would have boosted life expectancy"
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