By AMY ROMANO

I’ve been writing about safe and effective maternity care for years and direct a coordinated national effort to transform maternity care, but this is a post where the political gets personal.

Last weekend, I attended the birthday party for the sweetest one year old. There were all of the typical rituals – hands and face covered in cake frosting, a pile of toys and new clothes, and a tuckered out babe falling asleep as the party wound down. But this birthday was bittersweet, because it also marks the anniversary of a crisis that very nearly cost the life of this child’s mother, my friend.

Nine days after giving birth, rather than gazing with equal parts sheer love and sheer exhaustion at her baby, my friend – we’ll call her  Near Miss Mom – was unconscious in an ICU on a ventilator, recovering from the emergency hysterectomy and blood transfusion that had saved her life.

I’d say Near Miss Mom had become a “statistic” but we keep no statistics on near miss maternal events, even though multiple agencies and organizations have sounded alarm bells about the rising rate of maternal mortality and have cautioned that for every maternal death, there are many more near misses. Legislation just introduced in the House by Representative Conyers would, among other provisions, establish steps toward a standard definition and routine counting and reporting of maternal near misses.

Because if we’re not counting near misses, we’re not systematically learning what our health care system could be doing to avert them, and for that matter the deaths that do occur. A  just-released report from a state-wide, multi-year investigation of maternal deaths in California found that 38% were likely to be preventable. Let’s take Near Miss Mom’s case, which almost certainly could have been averted far before she was so close to death.Continue reading…

By MICHAEL MILLENSON

In the near-decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the “War on Terror” has cost the United States about $1.3 trillion, according to the National Center on Defense Information.

By comparison, it took just six months for the U.S. to spend that much money on health care, based on the $2.5 trillion spent in 2009.

Why does that comparison matter? Because as health care costs rise, they have begun to crowd out the money available in state and federal budgets for elementary and secondary education, infrastructure and other pressing human needs. The War on Terror isn’t going away and, in fact, may increase in intensity in the short term if fears of Al Qaeda retaliation prove true, so we won’t be de-funding the military to provide to get money to shore up crumbling bridges, roads and schools.

A 2009 report from the Office of Management and Budget put it plainly: “The Federal Government’s long-term fiscal shortfall is driven primarily by escalating health care costs…These growth rates are simply unsustainable and are why slowing the growth in health care costs is the single most important step we can take to put the Nation on firm fiscal footing.”

David Walker, the former U.S. Comptroller General turned crusader for fiscal responsibility, has said repeatedly, “If there’s one thing that could bankrupt American, it’s health care costs.”

Perhaps some of the patriotic unity inspired by the successful operation to kill Osama bin Laden can carry over to the efforts to responsibly control health care costs and preserve what makes America great. Not very likely – but, hey, one can always dream.