Obese Mothers are Good for the Economy.

Obese Mothers are Good for the Economy!

                                                                        Growing Obesity Increases Perils of Childbearing

With Doctors and hospitals starving to make ends meet in this tough economy the more challenging pregnancies faced by fat women and their is a ray of sunshine to the starving medical industry. It's simple economics. When medical care is more complicated and more specialists need to be brought is on a case costs go up... WAY up and so do profits!

Here is an excerpt from an article that appeared  the NY Times  that explains the good news for our struggling health care industry. Click here to read the entire article.

As Americans have grown fatter over the last generation, inviting more heart disease, diabetes and premature deaths, all that extra weight has also become a burden in the maternity ward, where babies take their first breath of life.  

About one in five women are obese when they become pregnant, meaning they have a body mass index of at least 30, as would a 5-foot-5 woman weighing 180 pounds, according to researchers with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And medical evidence suggests that obesity might be contributing to record-high rates of Caesarean sections and leading to more birth defects and deaths for mothers and babies. 

Hospitals, especially in poor neighborhoods, have been forced to adjust. They are buying longer surgical instruments, more sophisticated fetal testing machines and bigger beds. They are holding sensitivity training for staff members and counseling women about losing weight, or even having bariatric surgery, before they become pregnant.

At Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, where 38 percent of women giving birth are obese, Patricia Garcia had to be admitted after she had a stroke, part of a constellation of illnesses related to her weight, including diabetes and weak kidneys.

 Is it possible to be too fat? 

If you are an OBGYN the answer is a resounding NO! Here are the impressive numbers on C-sections alone that clearly show that the fatter a pregnant woman is the more revenue the health care industry can make.

Body Mass Index   vs   Percentage of Caesarian Births    

       20 - 25                    11%        

       25 - 30                    18%                

       30 - 35                   25%             

     35 - 40                     33%                  

     Over 40                   43%                     

Very obese women, or those with a B.M.I. of 35 or higher, are three to four times as likely to deliver their first baby by Caesarean section as first-time mothers of normal weight, according to a study by the Consortium on Safe Labor of the National Institutes of Health

There you have it fellow fatlings; another example of how obesity is good for the economy. I, Fat Bastard only wish that fat haters Mrs Obama and Ms Roth would see that. AND once again, GLUTTONY IS GOOD!

 

 

Since the publication of this article some clever bloaks in England, the second fattest country in the world, wrote a song in honor of me, Fat Bastard. I'm not surprised because according Google Analytics 25% of our traffic comes from the UK.