Non Fluffy Wicca

Hooray again for New Hampshire, often thought of as a podunk state full of yokels, but often pretty damn progressive. Today, the House considers a bill to help certified nurse midwives who are getting the short end of the insurance stick nationwide.

One of the best things that ever happened to me was when an OB/GYN said, "I don't understand why you are questioning me" about her birthing options. "I don't care if you're afraid, I'm going to do what's best for the baby." He was fired on the spot and we went off to a birthing center with certified nurse midwives who delivered a 9 1/2 pound baby with no drugs, no complications, no episiotomy, no tearing, and a doctor's later comment "I wouldn't have ever known you even HAD a baby if it wasn't here in the record."

A woman's right to choose medical care and birthing options should not be dictated by insurance companies despite evidence that low risk births are LESS problematic and the mothers and babies have BETTER outcomes with certified nurse midwives. Go NH. May more states follow suit.

Concord Monitor Online: Six months ago, Carol Leonard closed the doors to her Hopkinton birthing center, Longmeadow Farm, and stopped delivering babies, ending a 30-year midwifery career. The reason was simple: Leonard said she couldn't afford to stay in business anymore. Although she gets reimbursed by Medicaid for her poorest customers and her wealthiest ones pay on their own, Leonard said her bread-and-butter patients, middle-class women with private insurance, had deserted her because the state's largest insurance companies won't cover births at the center. Today, the House will consider a bill that would require insurance companies to cover midwives who deliver babies in their homes, birthing centers or their patients' homes. Currently several insurance companies only cover midwives who deliver babies in hospitals, known as nurse-midwives, and not home-based midwives, called New Hampshire Certified Midwives.

(Via The Concord Monitor.)