Let's Make Pregnancy Medicaid Cost Effective and Beneficial

Dear Nikki Haley,
We know that you care about the women and families in South Carolina and we also recognize that you work hard on the budget to provide safe and cost effective maternity care to our families. Since almost 50% of pregnant women in our state are on Medicaid, it's important to have policies that are not only cost effective but also provide excellent care.

For many years SC Medicaid recipients hoping to have natural births and breastfeed their babies, have been using Independent Midwives as a benefit of the state Medicaid plan. But on January 14, 2014 this option disappeared. Families were forced to choose a Managed Care Plan and told that they would have all of the services with the MCOs that the state plan offered. This simply isn’t true. MCOs have refused to contract with Independent midwives under the same credentials that the state used for contracting.

Mrs. Haley, if the MCO’s will not contract with Independent Midwives please allow SC maternity recipients to continue to use the state Fee-For-Service plan. It’s a simply policy that worked for many years and needs to be reinstated.
Not only would the policy be cost effective; but it would reduce cesarean section rates, provide preventative care, decrease prematurity, increase the successful breastfeeding success rate and promote healthy newborns. 

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