Grassroots Network: Sign AABC letter to Support Birth Centers

Dear Friends,

You can help support birth centers one of maternity care choices that should be widely available to all women simply by signing an on-line letter.

The American Association of Birth Centers (AABC) is asking for your help.

Rep. Susan Davis (D., CA) will soon introduce a bill to include birth centers as eligible providers for Medicaid payment. To clarify, when a Medicaid-covered birth takes place in a hospital, the doctor gets paid, and the hospital is paid too -- a facility fee. A judge recently ruled that Medicaid may not pay the 43 birth centers in Texas, because birth centers are not specifically listed in the federal statute for Medicaid. This ruling would apply nationally. But hospitals can still get paid if women who are Medicaid recipients give birth in hospitals. When birth centers are not reimbursed for a facility fee, they cannot survive economically, and Medicaid-eligible women are denied this excellent (and cost-saving) choice.

If you think this is wrong and bad public policy, please sign the AABC letter. The letter supports enactment of legislation, i.e. Rep. Davis' bill, that would correct this inequity.

Please pass this on to everyone you know and all birth-related or women's health elists that you belong to so others can sign too. PLEASE both sign and pass it on. AABC's goal is 1,000 signatures in the next week.

To sign the letter go here.


Sincerely,
Susan Hodges, "gatekeeper"