https://www.businessinsider.com/gop-senator-la-outlier-maternal-death-rate-skewed-black-women-2022-5
“So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear.” Correct it by not counting Blacks because…they don’t count?
Really. Damn Black women screw up everything. Maybe we can exclude them from being Americans…again…and get better stats among the states instead of near the bottom.
Honestly, that is a tone deaf, racist remark. Are Black women not citizens of Louisiana? Is Cassidy proud of the White maternal death rate and minorities are just truly inconvenient?
Oh, the truly sad part of this is that Cassidy is not one of the complete right wing loonies.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
We can solve a lot of problems the same way.
Don’t count black poverty and we have a lot less poor. Don’t count black victims of gun crime and you can see that “leftists” exaggerate the problem of gun violence. Don’t count black victims of Covid and the pandemic is not so bad. And on and on. We have heard this same “logic” many, many times.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Blacks have been de facto Americans for longer that most Whites. By excluding them that Congressman from Louisiana is saying two things: 1) we don’t care about Black maternal mortality except as it 2) makes Whites look bad by skewing the statistics.
I think this little article tells more truth about MAGA Republicans than it seems on the surface. Instead of working to correct a tragic imbalance in mortality, blame the dead women.
LikeLiked by 2 people
RE: “Honestly, that is a tone deaf, racist remark.”
Is it tone deaf and racist to speak the truth?
Spare us your lamentations and tell us how Senator Cassidy’s remark is false.
LikeLike
I didn’t say the numbers were false. But what is the point of saying our women have good maternal survival rates so long as they are White.
Is that better?
Lamentations?
LikeLiked by 2 people
RE: “But what is the point of saying our women have good maternal survival rates so long as they are White.”
Who said anything even remotely like that?
LikeLike
I’m sorry, I thought I pulled out that quote in my post.
So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear.”
Remove Blacks, and our White stats are in line with other states.
What is the point of saying that. How about, “there is a high maternal mortality among our Black citizens and we will work to improve that”.
Not Blacks are screwing up our stats.
See the difference?
LikeLiked by 2 people
If we don’t tests, we don’t have as many cases.
A familiar tactic of the new GOP.
LikeLiked by 1 person
RE: “Remove Blacks, and our White stats are in line with other states.”
No one said any such thing. You have misinterpreted your own source if you think they did.
You should follow the Bloomberg link to the original Politico article. At Politico you will find this paragraph:
“‘About a third of our population is African American; African Americans have a higher incidence of maternal mortality. So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear,’ Sen. Bill Cassidy said in an interview with POLITICO for the Harvard Chan School of Public Health series Public Health on the Brink. ‘Now, I say that not to minimize the issue but to focus the issue as to where it would be. For whatever reason, people of color have a higher incidence of maternal mortality.'”
To translate, maternal mortality in Louisianna looks unusually high, but when you correct for demographics it remains high, but not unusually so. Under these conditions, it could even be that it is white maternal mortality that makes Louisiana different from other states, or that Loisiana’s maternal mortality rate is merely a “normal” anomaly in the sense that outliers occur naturally from time to time.
Senator Cassidy has suggested that black maternal mortality in Louisiana deserves special attention, but you call him a racist for it. Shame!
LikeLike
Cassidy is correct and not factoring race would lead to inferior health care decisions.
If LA’s higher maternal death rate is used to allocate resources without regard to race, but the problem is restricted to that portion of the population that is Black, we would be wasting excess resources not needed for White women.
The higher Black maternal death rate is not only in LA, it is nationwide. There are many reasons, high among them are the women’s age and age of first pregnancy. Higher drug, alcohol and tobacco use are also factors.
If the problem is to be solved you have to address the causes where they are. And to do that, you have to address the cultural and health factors which are different by cultural groups.
I would suggest that if they really want to find the problems, they have to consider 4 groups.
White and Black women in New Orleans and both races n other parts of the State. You would likely find New Orleans is a very large part of the problem.
LikeLike
The stats are correct. Blaming Black women for dying because it screws up the maternal death rate is racist. Or just plain clueless blame shifting to get racist votes.
Now, the good that may come from this cheesy statement is to address the problem. Sayin we are fine so long as we ignore 1/3 of our citizens is not useful…except, as I said, to get votes from the trash in the ranks.
LikeLiked by 2 people
When you are obsessed with race, you have no business in public health care.
If, because of cultural and genetic differences one group has a higher maternal death rate, it would be foolish to ignore those differences and speculate that we should gaze into our navels in search of racism as the cause.
I worked in Hotel Dieu and Charity Hospitals long ago. We kind of hoped Katrina would give New Orleans a fresh start, but it is exactly as it was, less the arts community.
I suspect many families in New Orleans have gone generations without a bite of fresh vegetables. It is likely the most obese and malnourished city in the country, as well as the drunkest.
LikeLike
RE: “The higher Black maternal death rate is not only in LA, it is nationwide. There are many reasons, high among them are the women’s age and age of first pregnancy…”
I hesitate to mention this, but cultural phenomena can sometimes be traced to biological (or genetic) factors. It may not be black women’s or black society’s fault that black maternal mortality is high, but something rooted in the evolutionary past.
We should be cautious about assuming we know why maternal mortality is high for black women. We should at least reject nutty explanations such as “systemic racism” until the science is better.
LikeLike
There are certainly genetic factors.
Even matched for cultural practices, pre-eclampsia is more common in Black women, here and in Europe as well.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You can look all around for “cultural” differences but you will not find anything that comes close to explaining a maternal death rate for black mothers that is 3.5x that of white mothers. There is one academic framework in which the difference is readily understood – CRT. Black women simply do not get the same quality of medical care as white women do.
There are four complications of pregnancy that account for about 60% of the rate difference. They are:
Eclampsia
Preeclampsia
Post-portum cardiomyopathy
Obstetric embolism and hemorraghe.
All races suffer from these leading complications in about the same ratios. Therefore the difference in mortality is attributable to differences in care rather than your catalog of “cultural” and behaviorial reasons. These are conditions that need not be fatal with good medical care. Black women are less likely to get good medical care than white women. It is as simple as that.
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306375
As the author of the referenced study puts it. . . “The elevated risk of death for Black women across multiple causes of maternal mortality reveals the impact of structural racism on health and health care in the United States.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
What health care interventions do you think have anything to do with developing pre-eclampsia or eclampsia so that access to health care would make a difference?
My physician’s wife years ago died of pre-eclampsia, Think she had an access to healthcare problem?
LikeLike
Wow. Are we both using English?
Saying LA stats would be good if we didn’t have a large Black citizenry.
Well, LA does have a lot of Blacks, so the stats are pitiful.
If citizens are dying giving birth or getting pregnant, perhaps we should do something. (Particularly if abortion is totally outlawed to boot.)
LikeLiked by 2 people
Not sure what you’re getting at.
If treatment that is effective for White women was inappropriate or even harmful to Black women, would you want them to get it anyway in the name of equity?
There are differences in the causes for maternal death, and treating everyone the same is not good medicine.
LikeLike
Do the math.
If, as the article states, the rates of these four leading causes of pregnancy deaths are very similar across racial lines and yet black deaths are 3.55x the rate of white deaths, the only POSSIBLE explanation for such a drastic difference is the care the women get pre-natal, delivery and post-natal.
LikeLiked by 1 person
RE: “If, as the article states, the rates of these four leading causes of pregnancy deaths are very similar across racial lines…”
Where does the study say this?
LikeLike
NO, that is the least likely explanation.
LikeLike
RE: “All races suffer from these leading complications in about the same ratios. Therefore the difference in mortality is attributable to differences in care…”
That’s a hypothesis, not a fact. The study you cite doesn’t change this.
For example, the study finds that black mothers have higher death rates from preeclampsia and eclampsia than white mothers. That may be true, but the study doesn’t explain why it is true. It makes a boneheaded assumption that because these conditions are medically preventable racism must be the reason black mothers die of these conditions at higher rates.
What else could explain the disparity? Racial genetics. Until this factor is ruled out through further study, only a fool would claim that CRT is the “is one academic framework in which the difference is readily understood.”
LikeLike
So, you think black women – on the whole – get the same level of medical care as white women on the whole? And you call me a fool?
LikeLiked by 1 person
RE: “So, you think black women – on the whole – get the same level of medical care as white women on the whole?”
I don’t know whether they do or they don’t, but I do know that the claims you are making are not supported by the evidence you present. That’s why I call you a fool, as you say.
LikeLike
“That’s why I call you a fool”
It is a fact that black women suffer pregnancy related mortality at 3.55x the rate of white women.
It is a medical fact that the greatest medical threats to a pregnant woman’s life occur with similar frequency – with slight variations – across racial lines.
So, what could cause such a difference in mortality?
The authors of the paper cited believe that the major cause is the quality of care that black women get versus the quality of care that white women get. You cannot accept this OBVIOUS explanation so you postulate some massive but still unknown genetic difference to explain this huge disparity. There is PLENTY of evidence for the disparity in the quality and availability of care. There is no evidence for your imagined genetic difference.
The “fool” in this case is the fellow who is absolutely blind to reality because of the pre-conceived but clearly fallacious idea that everyone is treated equally by the institutions of this country.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Honestly, you liberals sure know how to weirdly skew everything into some racial issue. The way I read it is if you separate the women by race, they pretty much compare to national trends by race. What is racist about that?
LikeLike
“So, if you correct our population for race, we’re not as much of an outlier as it’d otherwise appear.”
Is he bragging that the stats are fine…just ignore our citizens that are Black?
He is talking about his own constituents. Fellow Americans.
LikeLiked by 1 person
RE: “Is he bragging that the stats are fine…just ignore our citizens that are Black?”
No, he is saying that if you want to correct the maternal mortality rate in LA, you need to help black mothers especially.
LikeLike
No, that is not what he said. That is what you said.
He said our stats are good if you ignore Black maternal fatalities.
I agree that he should try to correct the problem so stats would be good for all LA mothers. But that is not what he offered. He was making excuses for the pitiful medical stats for mothers.
LikeLiked by 1 person
RE: “He said our stats are good if you ignore Black maternal fatalities.”
If you believe that, then there is nothing more I can say, except that you have cried, “Racism” without cause.
LikeLike
I don’t see anyone bragging about anything. I do see you making a weird anti-GOP racial narrative akin to a parody out of a common sense statement. Adam Schiff would be proud he taught you well….
LikeLike
Len, Paul, I think I can offer some valuable insight here…
Clumsily implying that high maternal mortality is simply the natural order of things for black women is not racist. School curricula which acknowledge slavery and Jim Crow are racist.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I think this is essentially fair.
However, the implication in some observations that we do not have much of a problem because the bad things are concentrated among non-white people is not quite so clear. In this forum, for example, we frequently see the argument that if you exclude “urban” deaths, gun violence is not nearly so bad as it may seem.
LikeLiked by 1 person
When we have a very diverse and immigrant based country, it is sad to hear that America would be better if we just didn’t include some citizens in various statistics because they don’t truly represent “Americans”.
Either we take care of all our citizens and residents, or we don’t. If a large portion of us are suffering ill health and poverty, should we work to solve that or just say “we are just like all other Western countries if you don’t count…”?
3.5 times the maternal mortality is the real shame. Not working to solve that is flat out ignorant and counterproductive.
LikeLiked by 2 people