Spencer Bachus tells town hall crowd that drug use is cause of high infant mortality rate in U.S.

He also said that the government shouldn't aid families with autistic children in so many words at least. Here's an excerpt:

Bachus asked the crowd how many people were for the health care reform bill. There were a surprising number of people who clapped considering that the Republicans and Libertarians in the audience vastly outnumbered Democrats and liberals. He then asked how many people were against it and the roar from the crowd was deafening. Bachus said that while he represents every person in his district including those who didn't agree with him, he was against the health care reform bill. There was more roaring and clapping from the majority.

(large snip)

*note: I have to explain here the use of "peanut gallery." It is the term Bachus used to refer to the minority of us who were Democrats in favor of health care reform.

The next member of the peanut gallery to get to speak was former Chairman and Professor of the Department of Medicine at University of Alabama at Birmingham, William J. Koopman, M.D. Dr. Koopman noted that he saw people every day who were sick and couldn't get the care they needed because their private health insurers decided the treatment they could have and could not have and commented that health insurance should be about quality and not quantity. The crowd booed him and shouted that he should ask a question. Again, Bachus had to quieten the crowd.

Dr. Koopman continued. He pointed out that Bachus had shown a few medical statistics and then told the congressman that the United States has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the developed world and one of the lowest life expectancy rates. The crowd booed again. Bachus then started talking about infant mortality and told an anecdote about visiting a pediatric ward where babies were born addicted to drugs. He then said that the reason the infant mortality rate was so high in the United States is because of mothers who abuse drugs. Thankfully, the crowd didn't clap for that but there were a lot of murmurs and comments about how shameful it all was.

The congressman only took a few more questions after that and they were all from his supplicants in the audience who seemed to genuinely love everything he said. Except for the few questions from the so-called peanut gallery, the town hall meeting was like a pep rally for Congressman Spencer Bachus.

Drug addicted newborns are not the cause of the high infant mortality rate in the United States. The CDC reports that at at least one third of infant mortality in the United States are related to premature births. Contributing to the high incidence of premature births in the United States is the widespread use of and availability of fertility treatments. Women are having multiple births and other complications leading to premature birth. For more on how premature births affect the infant mortality rate in the U.S., see this Slate article.

We have a high infant mortality rate because the wealthy and the well insured are driving it up by having babies that are conceived through methods involving fertility treatments and procedures?

Doesn't that hurt our argument that its because people have don't have insurance?

I need better stats on that before I believe it. I think babies are dyingbecause they aren't getting proper care due to lack of insurance.

The hospitals consider NICU's cash cows. And of course that isn't the ONLY reason for the high infant mortality rate. There are other reasons as well. But that is one of the biggest reasons.

My article was really meant to be more about the atrociousness of saying that the high IMR in the US is due to drug addiction. That's absurd.

Blacks have more than twice the number of IMR than whites. That ought to tell us something. Plus it depends on where you live. Mississippi has the highest IMR in the U.S. if I remember that right.

One has to suspect he's counting on his listeners making the inference that high infant mortality in the US is a problem of "them nigras, who ain't got no values nohow, killin' their babies by smokin' crack."

He said the town hall meetings were working since a public option is no longer on the table. The crowd roared. It was vomitrocious.

Somehow I'd had the toad's party wrong for a while.

Drugs, alcohol, and smoking are contributors to low-birth-rate and premature birth.

Lack of health care and poor nutrition for expectant mothers are a factor. Enriching flour with folic acid has greatly reduced various birth defects, although it might also be increasing the rate of prostate cancer. Programs meeting these needs have produced dramatic results.

Various other things might be contributing factors, even things like higher rates if fathers had served in Iraq, etc.

Reporting methods and definitions vary greatly between countries, states, and groups therein, and these have changed over time. How data is categorized, which things are reported, and other differences make it very difficult to compare. Whether a baby that survives only a few minutes is recorded as stillborn or live birth can have a large cumulative impact on infant mortality rates.

But life expectancy across the board is a lot clearer and of course he didn't say anything about that. After all, Alabama is about 47th in life expectancy of the 50 states.

He couldn't answer any question put to him, instead he would go off into a rambling anecdote that had no meaning.

The quick way of increasing life expectancy in any state is to reduce the IMR. The US's relatively poor life expectancy showing is, in part, due to its higher infant mortality rate.

The anecdote was just that. But the discussion is pertinent, if not the entire story.

Every single country on the planet has a drug problem. Drugs are popular and no matter how vicious the moralists get, people who want them are able to find them and use them.

The most damaging drugs to the developing fetus are nicotine and alcohol, and those are legal.

The main determinant for low infant and maternal mortality is access to health care including prenatal and postnatal care.

That's what we don't have. Nobody's got a pious population. However, access to medical care is what makes the biggest difference in infant and maternal mortality.

Baucus is an ass. I sincerely hope this is his last term and he's replaced by a real Democrat.

I yelled, "Oh England and Canada don't have drug problems, do they?"

"GLENN BECK RULES THE WORLD. FOX NEWS FAIR AND BALANCED. KILL THE BILL. " by Sick Freak.

Satirical or sincere?
I think the latter, but who knows!