It's Safer to Have a Baby in the Czech Republic Than the U.S.

While this particular entry is more concerned with Facts than with Truth, it certainly gives me pause.

From The Body, by Bill Bryson:

"Despite its lavish spending, the United States has one of the highest rates of both infant and maternal death among industrialized nations," according to The New York Times. The average cost of childbirth in the United States is about $30,000 for a conventional birth and $50,000 for a Cesarean, about three times the cost for either in the Netherlands. Yet American women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth than women in Europe and about three times more likely to suffer a pregnancy-related fatality than women in Britain, Germany, Japan, or the Czech Republic. Their infants are no less at risk. One of every 233 newborn babies dies in the United States, compared with just one in 450 in France and one in 909 in Japan. Even countries like Cuba (one in 345) and Lithuania (one in 385) do much better.

The causes in America include higher rates of maternal obesity, greater use of fertility treatments (which produce more failed outcomes), and increased incidence of the rather mysterious disease known as preeclampsia.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *

Truth is...Paul Simon said it in his song, "A Simple Desultory Philippic": All of my wealth won't buy me health.