RandomGuy
12-10-2019, 07:38 AM
Over three years, nearly 400 pregnant or new mothers died in Texas. Its system for helping the uninsured thwarts women at every turn, frustrates doctors and midwives, and incentivizes substandard care.
Rosa Diaz was no stranger to hunger and stress and a throbbing pain in the gut that was usually nothing serious — gastritis, she had been told, or lactose intolerance. When she became ill on the evening of Jan. 6, 2015, she figured it was the hot chocolate she’d been drinking with her family to celebrate El Día de los Reyes. It was made with milk, but she finished it anyway, savoring every drop.
In the middle of the night, her oldest daughter, Diana, found her on the couch, clutching her belly and moaning. Diana half-carried her to the bathroom, offering her some Alka-Seltzer and a sip of Gatorade to wash the antacid down. Rosa started to shiver and cry. “Let me drive you to the emergency room,” Diana urged. “No, I don’t have insurance,” Rosa protested. “I just want to go to sleep. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow.”
Rosa, a 43-year-old Mexican immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in the 1990s, rarely saw doctors. She was employed through temp agencies, mostly working in factories and cleaning schools — jobs that didn’t offer insurance or pay enough to let her afford her own policy. Without realizing it, she’d become pregnant, and the fertilized egg had attached itself to her fallopian tube, instead of her uterus. The condition, an ectopic pregnancy, is extremely dangerous if not treated immediately.
Diana tucked a blanket around her mother and sat with her for a while, then went back to bed. Around 3 a.m., she heard her mother scream. Rosa’s fallopian tube had exploded, and three liters of blood — almost two-thirds of her total volume — was gushing into her abdomen. By the time paramedics delivered her to the Baylor University Medical Center emergency room in Dallas, her heart had stopped.
When Diana thinks back on the night her mother died, and what was most on her mind, she still gets angry — “because instead of wanting to feel better, she was more worried about the cost.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-extraordinary-danger-of-being-pregnant-and-uninsured-in-texas
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These are the casualties in the Republican War on the Poor.
Rosa Diaz was no stranger to hunger and stress and a throbbing pain in the gut that was usually nothing serious — gastritis, she had been told, or lactose intolerance. When she became ill on the evening of Jan. 6, 2015, she figured it was the hot chocolate she’d been drinking with her family to celebrate El Día de los Reyes. It was made with milk, but she finished it anyway, savoring every drop.
In the middle of the night, her oldest daughter, Diana, found her on the couch, clutching her belly and moaning. Diana half-carried her to the bathroom, offering her some Alka-Seltzer and a sip of Gatorade to wash the antacid down. Rosa started to shiver and cry. “Let me drive you to the emergency room,” Diana urged. “No, I don’t have insurance,” Rosa protested. “I just want to go to sleep. I’m sure I’ll feel better tomorrow.”
Rosa, a 43-year-old Mexican immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in the 1990s, rarely saw doctors. She was employed through temp agencies, mostly working in factories and cleaning schools — jobs that didn’t offer insurance or pay enough to let her afford her own policy. Without realizing it, she’d become pregnant, and the fertilized egg had attached itself to her fallopian tube, instead of her uterus. The condition, an ectopic pregnancy, is extremely dangerous if not treated immediately.
Diana tucked a blanket around her mother and sat with her for a while, then went back to bed. Around 3 a.m., she heard her mother scream. Rosa’s fallopian tube had exploded, and three liters of blood — almost two-thirds of her total volume — was gushing into her abdomen. By the time paramedics delivered her to the Baylor University Medical Center emergency room in Dallas, her heart had stopped.
When Diana thinks back on the night her mother died, and what was most on her mind, she still gets angry — “because instead of wanting to feel better, she was more worried about the cost.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-extraordinary-danger-of-being-pregnant-and-uninsured-in-texas
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These are the casualties in the Republican War on the Poor.