Lowering the cost of chiildbirth

It is well known around the natural childbirth experts that out of hospital births whether in a birth center or at home cost a lot less with no compromise in safety. In fact the safest place to have a baby is at home, not in a hospital as popularly believed. Here is a great video on the savings that could be gained by removing low risk women from the hospital to have a baby. It's very compelling.

There are 4.3 million births a year in the U.S.
Average cost for home birth is about $2,400
Average cost of birth center births is $5,300
Average cost of hospital births is $8,500
About 1% of the population give birth at home
If 5% of the population gave birth at home the savings would be:
1.304 billion at home
If another 5% gave birth in a birth center the savings would be:
675 million at a birth center

When prenatal care is provided by Certified Professional midwives, the incidence of low birth weight babies(costing an additional $15,100)  go from 2.4% to 1.1%  which is a savings of 84 million dollars.

Certified Professional Midwives provide competion which helps drive the cost down to the consumer. The average savings of the competition should drive the cost down about 10% bringing a savings of 3.2 billion a year.

Cesareans add about $5,300 to the cost of a birth.
The national average is 31.8%
19% to low risk women in the hospital
3.7% of home births
4.4% of birth center births.
If there is an additional 5% of people giving birth at home and an additional 5% giving birth in birth centers the savings would be $341 million dollars annually.

If the cesarean rate were reduced to 15% which is the current World Health Organizations recommendation the savings would be $3.5 billion annually.

If all of the about recommendations are taking it will result in a cumulative savings of 9.104 billion annually.

Here is a link to the above info.