Bloomberg 2020

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 30, 2019

Mike Bloomberg Releases Plan To Tackle Maternal Mortality Crisis and Decrease Disparities in Maternal Health Outcomes

Montgomery, Alabama—December 30, 2019 - Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg today unveiled his plan for tackling the nation’s maternal mortality crisis, with a particular focus on decreasing disparities in maternal health outcomes across the country for communities of color. Bloomberg announced his plan in Montgomery, Alabama, which has one of the highest maternal and infant mortality rates in the nation.

For black women, who disproportionately lack access to affordable, quality health care, the risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes is three to four times higher than that of white women. Black women are also twice as likely to suffer from life-threatening pregnancy complications and face the brunt of implicit bias in medicine. President Trump has restricted access for women to critical health services, in Alabama as well as nationwide, making the disparities in coverage worse. 
 
Mike Bloomberg’s plan details several initiatives designed to decrease disparities in maternal health outcomes across the country and reduce the disproportionately high maternal mortality rate among women of color, including:
  • Addressing the racial bias among health care providers – both implicit and explicit – by requiring doctors to have training in understanding and countering implicit bias in medical care. 
  • Standardizing maternal mortality data collection. To address a lack of reliable data around maternal mortality, Bloomberg’s plan centralizes data collection at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and draws on the data to inform and improve standards of health care. The data will be used to establish programs to assist clinicians in identifying high-risk pregnancies.
  • Providing a public-option insurance plan, free of charge. While low-income women can enroll in Medicaid when they become pregnant, in fourteen states, including Alabama, the program covers new mothers for only 60 days postpartum. Mike Bloomberg’s plan would allow low-income women, who would otherwise qualify for expanded Medicaid under the ACA, to enroll in a public-option plan free of charge. Alabama has not expanded Medicaid, which in turn leaves out 314,000 people from the program.
One goal of Mike Bloomberg’s plan is to better serve the 28 million women of childbearing age living in rural America by encouraging more providers to practice in rural areas. His proposal calls for the expansion of the National Health Service Corps, which offers loan repayment and scholarship opportunities for doctors who practice in high-need areas, to also cover medical students from minority communities. Additionally, Bloomberg will boost funding for medical schools at historically black colleges and universities to increase the number of people of color in the health care workforce.

“In the greatest and wealthiest country in the world, we cannot accept the disgraceful racial inequality in maternal health care that exists in Alabama and across the country,” said Mike Bloomberg. “As president, I will make ending that inequality and improving health care for African-American women a top priority – and the plan I am announcing today will help us do it. I've spent decades protecting women's rights and improving women's health care, and I know we can end these racial disparities and save the lives of so many African-American mothers and children."  

Because fewer than half of all rural counties have a practicing obstetrician or gynecologist, or a hospital with an obstetric unit, the plan encourages states to pass laws that allow trained medical professionals to provide additional care that is currently limited to a doctor’s scope. This is also aimed at providing better care for more women, especially in rural areas. 

The plan introduced today reaffirms Mike Bloomberg’s long-standing support for women’s reproductive rights. Bloomberg will work with Congress to codify Roe v. Wade into law, guaranteeing legal access to safe abortion in all 50 states. He will also partner with Congress to repeal the Hyde amendment, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except to save the life of the mother, or in cases of incest or rape. In addition, his plan includes a pledge to abolish a new rule put into place by President Trump that bans Title X organizations from providing abortions (even if they are funded separately) and from referring patients to other abortion providers. Abolishing this rule will expand reproductive health care to four million low-income women supported by the Title X National Family Planning, and nearly 17 million more women ages 15-44 who receive Medicaid benefits. 

By contrast, President Trump has gone out of his way to restrict access to abortions and access to health insurance and preventive health services. In one of his first actions as president, Trump reinstated and expanded what is known as the “Mexico City Policy,” which requires foreign nongovernmental organizations that receive U.S. aid to certify that they will not perform or promote abortion. Not only did this signal to women everywhere his intention to undermine, in every way possible, women’s right to choose, but it foretold a series of actions that Trump has pursued over the past three years to limit access to affordable, quality medical care of all kinds.

ADDITIONAL QUOTES
 
Michael Nutter, Former Mayor of Philadelphia, PA

“America’s women are dying from preventable causes,” said former mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter. “And, for black women, the risk of dying from pregnancy is three-to-four times higher than it is for white women. Mike Bloomberg will work with Congress to expand access to reproductive health services for all Americans and ensure that practitioners can actually provide the services they are certified to perform. He’s going to make sure our mothers, sisters, and daughters get the health services they need so they and their babies can live longer, stronger lives.”
 
Greg Fischer, Mayor of Louisville, KY
 
“Far too many communities across our nation, including in my home state of Kentucky, lack easy access to quality affordable health care. Mike Bloomberg brings empathy and data-driven policies to help provide our families the care they need. That’s why we must send him to the White House in November - for states like ours, an approach like his can’t come a moment too soon.”
 
“Mike Bloomberg has a long track record of improving women’s health,” Fischer added.  “As Mayor of New York, Mike worked to expand access to emergency contraception and provide nursing support to low-income new mothers, and now we need him to bring his brand of innovative problem solving to improve healthcare standards nationwide.”
 
“We can’t solve problems we can’t quantify, which is why Mike’s plan to standardize maternal mortality data collection and centralize it at the CDC will play a crucial role in accurately identifying critical gaps in care, and target needed funds to address them,” said Fischer.  “I know. We use data in Louisville every day to improve government services, and I’m a big believer in Mike’s philosophy that the only progress we can see is the progress we can measure. The sooner we start the better, so that women and families can finally have a health care system that works for them.”
 
Steve Benjamin, Mayor of Columbia, SC
 
“It’s an open secret that we’re in the middle of a women’s health crisis,” said Mayor Steve Benjamin of Columbia, South Carolina. “And it’s a crisis that’s made worse by a president who’s indifferent to the unique medical needs of mothers and their families. The number of women without healthcare is growing and so is the number of women who delay seeking medical treatment because they simply can’t afford it. That’s bad news for women and for the families who depend on them, which is why Mike Bloomberg’s plan to rebalance the scales by making women’s health care more accessible is a win for everyone."
 
“As the mayor of a city with a large African American population, I’m especially concerned by data that show black women have markedly worse outcomes during pregnancy than white women - even among women in the same economic bracket,” Benjamin added, “which is why Mike’s emphasis on diversifying the pool of physicians is important in making sure minorities receive medical care that’s attuned to their needs.”
 
“The bottom line is that cities like mine are only as healthy as the people who live there,” Benjamin said, “and when you have half the population that isn’t getting the care they need to live full and vibrant lives, it means we simply aren’t living up to our potential as a nation. Mike knows we can and should do better, and with him in the White House, we can look forward to an administration who finally treats women’s health like the priority it should be."
 
Michael Tubbs, Mayor of Stockton, CA 
 
“My wife and I just welcomed a newborn baby boy,” said Mayor of Stockton, California Michael Tubbs. “And it is not lost on me that the United States is the most dangerous place in the developed world to give birth. More women die in childbirth now than they did twenty years ago, which should shock every American. And black women are dying at rates that are even higher than their white counterparts. Mike knows this and it’s why we should all get behind Mike’s plan to wrap better services around pregnant mothers and put programs in place to combat racial bias in health care.”
 
Jill Lafer, Former Board Chair of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL New York
 
"Mike Bloomberg has always been a champion for women's health," said Jill Lafer, former board chair of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL New York. "Mike's commitment to reproductive and maternal health is second to none. Mike's leadership in the White House will save countless women's lives across the country, especially in communities of color and in communities where healthcare access is unavailable.”  
 
“America's maternal mortality rate has risen to one of the highest among wealthy countries," Lafer said. "As president, Mike Bloomberg will reverse this alarming trend. While he was mayor, New York City's infant mortality rate fell to historic lows. Mike will continue to utilize a results-oriented approach to solve our women's health crisis nationally. His focus will include providing new moms and their babies the care they need to thrive."
 
"I am thrilled that he pledges to abolish Trump's rule that bans Title X organizations from providing abortions and from referring patients to other abortion providers.   This will expand reproductive health care to four million low-income women and nearly 17 million more women ages 15-44 who receive Medicaid benefits. His commitment to overturn the domestic and international gag rules will expand reproductive health care to millions of women around the world."
 
Joan Malin, Former President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of New York City
 
"Bloomberg has long championed public health issues and placed women's health needs as core to ensuring healthy communities. His plan speaks to the critical need for these services across the country, and I applaud his plan,” said Joan Malin, Former President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of New York City.
 
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MIKE BLOOMBERG’S PLAN TO ADDRESS THE NATION’S MATERNAL HEALTH CRISIS AND IMPROVE ACCESS TO WOMEN’S HEALTH SERVICES

FACT SHEET

The United States is among the most dangerous places in the world in which to give birth. In the past 20 years, severe maternal complications have more than doubled and the U.S. maternal mortality rate has risen to highest among affluent countries. Today, nearly 700 women in the United States die each year from pregnancy or delivery complications, and the U.S. is one of 13 countries in the world where maternal mortality rates are worse than they were two decades ago.
 
For black women especially, who disproportionately lack access to affordable, quality health care, the risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes is three to four times higher than that of white women. Further, black women are twice as likely to suffer from life-threatening pregnancy complications and face the brunt of implicit bias in medicine.
 
Mike Bloomberg believes this is nothing short of a women’s health crisis, aggravated by President Trump’s unrelenting effort to undermine women’s access to reproductive and sexual health services. Bloomberg is running for president to ensure the unacceptable and irresponsible actions by the President are stopped and that the health of moms and their babies are given the critical support they deserve.
 
MIKE BLOOMBERG’S PLAN

Women’s health is under attack – and the Trump administration is leading the charge, restricting women’s access to reproductive and sexual health services, and worsening the disparities in care between white and African American women.

Bloomberg’s policy details several initiatives designed to decrease disparities in maternal health outcomes across the country and reduce the disproportionately high maternal mortality rate among women of color, including:
  • Addressing the racial bias among health care providers – both implicit and explicit –  by requiring doctors to have training in understanding and countering implicit bias in medical care. 
  • Standardizing maternal mortality data collection. To address a lack of reliable data around maternal mortality, his plan centralizes data collection at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and uses the data to inform and improve standards of health care. The data will be used to establish programs to assist clinicians in identifying high-risk pregnancies.
  • Providing, free of charge, a public-option insurance plan. While low-income women can enroll in Medicaid when they become pregnant, in fourteen states, including Alabama, the program covers new mothers for only 60 days postpartum. His plan would ensure that all low-income women would qualify for enhanced Medicaid, including those who do not live in states that expanded Medicaid under Obamacare. Alabama has not expanded Medicaid, which in turn leaves out 314,000 people from the program.
  • Boosting funding for medical schools at HBCUs. His plan also boosts funding for medical schools at historically black colleges and universities to increase the number of people of color in the health-care workforce.
Bloomberg’s Plan Also Focuses On Better Service the 28 Million Women of Childbearing Age Living in Rural America
  • He will expand the National Health Service Corps, which offers loan repayment and scholarship opportunities for doctors who practice in high-need areas, to also cover medical students from minority communities.
  • To address impending provider shortages, Mike Bloomberg will encourage states to allow nurse practitioners, physicians assistants and other medical professionals to perform the full range of sexual and reproductive health procedures necessary to preserve the health of women, irrespective of race or income.
Bloomberg Supports Existing Legislation Intended To Address These Issues
  • He supports Senator Kamala Harris’s  Maternal Care Access and Reducing Emergencies (CARE) Act, designed to address the structural racism that puts black women and their babies at greater risk. This plan 1) Creates a new $25 million program to address racial bias in maternal health care through a new grant program directed to medical schools, nursing schools, and other health professional training programs to support evidence-based implicit training that will improve care for black women by reducing bias in judgment or behavior; 2) Allocates $125 million to identify high-risk pregnancies, and provide moms with the culturally competent care and resources they need. The new grant program will help states develop and carry out pregnancy medical home programs that improve care by incentivizing maternal health care providers to deliver integrated health care services to pregnant women and new moms and reduce adverse maternal health outcomes, maternal deaths, and racial health disparities in maternal mortality and morbidity; and 3) Helps medical schools incorporate bias recognition in clinical skills testing by directing the National Academy of Medicine to study and make recommendations.
  • Mike Bloomberg also supports the Maximizing Outcomes for Moms through Medicaid Improvement and Enhancement of Services (MOMMIES) Act, co-sponsored by Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Kamala Harris (D-CA), which would enhance coverage for pregnant women covered by Medicaid -- which covers nearly half of all births in the United States -- by extending coverage for many women to a full year after childbirth, increasing access to primary care providers and women's health providers, establishing a maternity care home demonstration project, and taking action to expand access to doula care.
The Plan re-confirms Mike Bloomberg’s Long-standing Support for Women’s Reproductive Rights
  • Mike Bloomberg promises to expand access to reproductive health services by working with Congress to codify Roe v. Wade and repeal the Hyde Amendment, which bars federal funding for abortion except to save a woman’s life. He would also abolish both the domestic and global gag rules the Trump administration has applied to organizations that receive funding for family planning.
  • His plan also includes a pledge to abolish a new rule put into place by President Trump that bans Title X organizations from providing abortions (even if they are funded separately) and from referring patients to other abortion providers.  Abolishing this rule will expand reproductive health care to four million low-income women supported by the Title X National Family Planning, and nearly 17 million more women ages 15-44 who receive Medicaid benefits. 
MIKE BLOOMBERG'S RECORD
 
Mike Bloomberg has already shown leadership in taking on these issues.
  • In 2003, he adopted the Nurse-Family Partnership model for low-income pregnant moms, and helped grow NYC’s program into the country’s largest.
    • Nurse-Family Partnership nurse home visitors work with low-income young women who are pregnant with their first child, helping these vulnerable young clients achieve healthier pregnancies and births, stronger child development, and a path toward economic self-sufficiency. 
    • More than 8,000 women were served by the city’s Nurse Family Partnership, which paired experienced nurses with low-income, first-time moms to help them cope with caring for a newborn. The NYC Nurse-Family Partnership has since expanded to become the largest urban site in the nation, serving all five boroughs in New York City.
  • New York City’s infant mortality rate fell to historic lows during the Bloomberg Administration, with a nearly 25 percent overall rate decline between 2001 and 2013, more than than the national average. The overall infant mortality rate (deaths per 1,000 live births) fell to 4.6 in 2013, from 6.1 in 2001. The rate for black infants declined 17 percent, to 8.3 from 10. The rate for Hispanic infants fell 21 percent, to 4.4 from 5.6. 
  • In 2012, Bloomberg Philanthropies funded an innovative maternal health program in Tanzania that has impacted at least 50,000 moms and their children over three years. As part of the program, more than 100 local non-physician clinicians including assistant medical officers and nurse midwives in Tanzania’s most isolated areas have been trained to perform life-saving procedures including caesarean sections since the program began. To date, more than 1,000 babies have been delivered by C-section in villages where women previously had to travel several hours to receive care – often when it was too late. Overall, the number of maternal deaths from bleeding and other complications in Tanzania have been reduced; in one district alone, maternal deaths declined by 32% in less than 2 years due to the project.
  • In 2014, Bloomberg Philanthropies partnered with Planned Parenthood Global to expand access to reproductive health care and reduce maternal death in developing countries. As part of the initiative, Planned Parenthood Global, the international division of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, provided technical support to local organizations advocating for expanded access to reproductive health care in Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Uganda. This program built on a broader campaign to ensure that 120 million women and girls in the world’s poorest countries had access to family planning services by the year 2020. In 2012, Mike Bloomberg committed $50 million to Family Planning 2020 (FP 2020), a global movement of nonprofit organizations, donors, and researchers.  
THE ISSUE
 
Women’s health in the United States is declining. Women are among the fastest growing group of people who lack health insurance – and those without proper coverage are more likely to delay prenatal care, contributing to maternal mortality rates. 
  • The United States is the most dangerous nation in the developed world in which to give birth. And in the past 20 years, severe maternal complications have more than doubled and the U.S. maternal mortality rate has risen to highest among affluent countries.
  • Both nationally and locally, negative maternal health outcomes for black women are disproportionately high. Black mothers died most often from heart conditions and blood pressure complications like preeclampsia. And black women who earn higher incomes still die at higher rates than white women of the same economic background. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists acknowledges, racial bias among health care providers’ – both implicit and explicit – contributes to the disproportionately high maternal mortality rate among women of color.
  • Nationally, for every woman who dies from childbirth or pregnancy complications, there are as many as 100 women who face life-threatening pregnancy and childbirth complications, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Black women are four-times as likely than white women to die from pregnancy-related complications.
Trump
  • President Trump has worked to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — which could roll back significant gains in the proportion of people of color with access to health care.
  • Trump’s efforts to take away the ACA’s mandatory health benefits — including maternity coverage and well-woman exams.
  • President Trump has worked to undermine, in every way possible, women’s right to choose and the availability of other critical health services, including banning organizations that receive Title X funding from performing abortions or discussing abortion or referrals with patients, and pushing for limitations on Medicaid coverage, hurting the most vulnerable.
  • A bundle of maternal health bills introduced in the House of Representatives passed out of committee and are expected to earn full house support in early 2020. The outlook is dim for the bill’s prospects of surviving in a Republican-led Senate 
Alabama

On December 30th, Mike Bloomberg will visit Montgomery, AL as part of the rollout for his maternal health policy.
  • Alabama has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the nation and the state’s infant mortality rate is greater than nearly every other state. Since 2016, maternal mortality in Alabama increased 21% from 9.8 to 11.9 deaths per 100,000 live births.
  • Nearly two-thirds of Alabama moms reported having some kind of medical problem during pregnancy, according to Alabama’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System, a CDC-based survey of pregnancy-related experiences in the United States.
  • Alabama has some of the highest rates in the nation of chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes and obesity that endanger pregnant women. The state ranks 46th in the nation in women’s and children’s health, according to the United Health Foundation.
  • Alabama hospitals rank 47th in maternity care and infant feeding, according to the CDC’s National Survey of Maternity Practices in Infant Nutrition and Care.
  • Since 2016, the percentage of uninsured women ages 18-44 decreased 25% from 19.9% to 14.9%.
  • Since 2016, child mortality in Alabama increased 1% from 31.3 to 31.5.
  • Alabama is one of nine states where more than 34 percent of deliveries are cesareans. The ideal, according to the World Health Organization, is 10 to 15 percent. 
  • Medicaid covered 58 percent of births in Alabama in 2016.
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