Interesting news article about midwifery

[Taedareth]

Here's the link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060530/...siness_of_life

The article says that a lot of insurance carriers will pay for midwife-attended home births. That would have been great! Dunno about you ladies, but our insurance company (through DSHS) was violently opposed to covering our midwife for our home birth. I struggled for months to get them to pay for even a portion of it. They said it was sufficient that they would pay costs for a CNM "medwife" at the local hospital, which was totally not the birth experience we had in mind. (It so happens that there is a birth center in the next town over that would have been covered by insurance too, but the ladies staffing it were way too medical-model for my comfort.)

Anyway, this article about the trend towards midwife-attended births was pretty interesting.

[Panthira]

My insurance would have paid for a homebirth without pulling out even a piece of redtape, but since I was going VBAC (for the second time), they wouldn't pay for any of it.
I only was able to go VBAC with a midwife in a hospital because I had a prior VBAC. Huh?
They wouldn't allow, by CALIFORNIA LAW, a VBAC in a birth center.

Talk about bull$h*t. :

[mariposita]

insurance paid 90% of my first waterbirth, but my new insurance would only pay lab fees.

when will insurance companies realize how much money they save with homebirth???

[Taedareth]

Oh you're going to love this. My midwife participated in a study done by DSHS a couple years ago. It was a 5-year pilot program where they paid for midwifery care and the midwives all over Washington State (I think it was only here) kept careful track of all kinds of statistics. DSHS wanted to know if midwife-attended pregnancies and births had equally good outcomes as OB-attended pregnancies and births.

They ended the study after only 3 years because the results were SO OVERWHELMINGLY OBVIOUS that midwifery care was had VASTLY BETTER OUTCOMES. The c-section rate statewide for midwife-attended births was 3%, costs were tremendously lower than OB care, and so on and so on.

Then what happens? DSHS contracts with health insurance carriers that deny women the option to have homebirth. What was the point? And when will the insurance carriers realize they will save thousands of dollars per birth if they will cover licensed midwives (not just CNMs who work in hospitals)?

[aisraeltax]

here's another article too:

our insurance (harvard pilgrim) paid for our midwife but wouldnt pay for the center's fee (only about 250). they would have covered 100% the c/s my doc scheduled for me.