First, mothers-to-be in the US need single-payer healthcare, not be sentenced to prison for having a miscarriage, and not told they must be dying of sepsis before they can receive healthcare.
In a Where To Invade Next? (2015)-style of policy prescriptions, the US should copy baby boxes, use policies that work, and measure the results of experiments with creative solutions as long as they work rather than putting the military-industrial complex and profits of big pharma and megahospitals before lives and the standards of living of regular people to not go bankrupt.
Income limits usually apply still. In my state, its up to 32K for pregnant women or for those with a child under age 1. For children 1 and 5 it goes down to about 20K.
If you're above those limits, no medicaid. You can go on ACA/Obamacare plans but those are (much) more expensive even with subsidies, at least in my state.
A birth all in all is surely way above 10k dollars. So people are literally expected to pay 5k+ to have a child? If that's not stressful enough for many poorer people I don't know either
If it's an emergency of some sort, it's probably 100% covered. The thing though is that MedicAid is run similarly to Medicare where private insurers get involved but provide really shitty plans with terrible formularies and very limited choices for providers. Also, there's widespread healthcare provider bias, stigma, and discrimination against MedicAid patients.
> Out of pocket costs cannot be imposed for emergency services, family planning services, pregnancy-related services, or preventive services for children. Generally, out of pocket costs apply to all Medicaid enrollees except those specifically exempted by law and most are limited to nominal amounts. Exempted groups include children, terminally ill individuals, and individuals residing in an institution
There's an incredible variety of health care needed in the 9 months before birth, and well after. That care is poorly covered in the US compared to most developed nations.
We were both in college when my first child was born with one $13/hr summer internships's worth of income. Medicaid covered 100% of everything; I paid $0 out of pocket.
This is false. Medicaid coverage is better than even European healthcare systems. It will cover rare disease drugs that aren’t paid for in the EU (it has to by law).
Plus the OOP expenses are basically zero.
While true not all doctor accept new Medicaid patients, you can find care.
>First, mothers-to-be in the US need single-payer healthcare, not be sentenced to prison for having a miscarriage,
In your opinion, sure, but American voters disagree, which is why it's like this. American voters chose the Supreme Court that made this recent change.
I'm pretty sure that the commenter was referring to baby boxes as in "box of supplies to be able to take care of a baby" [0] and not as in "box to abandon a baby if you cannot take care of it" [1].
I know they have this in Finland, but I suspect it's more as tradition than need. The other Nordic countries does not have anything like that. In Norway there's a diaper brand that gives out boxes to new mothers, but it's more like a fun thing than something that is needed.
What works is a proper health care system with a predefined care path for pregnancies including regular checkups, access to courses and educational material about pregnancy and child birth, low bar for paid sick leave for pregnant women and paid maternity leave mandated by law.
Yes, without much knowledge on the subject, I do intuitively agree with you. I don't think baby boxes per se can make that much of a difference — they're more like the "icing on the cake" of a solid social support policy to help expectant and new mothers.
Since you dug up those links from Wikipedia, it should be noted that baby hatch is first in the list on baby box, indicating it’s the more common usage.
But also maybe the term baby box is too ambiguous to be used at all, if it means both of those things.
In a Where To Invade Next? (2015)-style of policy prescriptions, the US should copy baby boxes, use policies that work, and measure the results of experiments with creative solutions as long as they work rather than putting the military-industrial complex and profits of big pharma and megahospitals before lives and the standards of living of regular people to not go bankrupt.