Rural America registers spike in babies born with opioid withdrawal
By Naomi Spencer
28 December 2016
The number of babies born with opioid withdrawal has risen dramatically in the last decade across the United States, with rural areas disproportionally affected. A research letter published online December 12 in the Journal of the American Medical Association publication JAMA Pediatrics reported that rural hospitals have dealt with a sharp increase in the number of infants exhibiting neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS). The increase coincides with the deepening of poverty and explosion of painkiller and heroin use in the United States.
“Compared with their urban peers, rural infants and mothers with opioid-related diagnoses were more likely to be from lower-income families, have public insurance, and be transferred to another hospital following delivery,” wrote Nicole L.G. Villapiano, MD, the lead author of the research team from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor (UM).
NAS is a diagnosis that encompasses complications and withdrawal symptoms suffered by newborns exposed to opioids in the mother’s womb. Between 2000 and 2012, the US has seen a nearly fivefold increase in the number of NAS cases.
UM researchers analyzed hospital data of neonatal births and obstetric deliveries to correlate rates of NAS and maternal opioid use among rural patients and their urban counterparts from 2004 to 2013. Over this timeframe, they found the percentage of infants with NAS who were from rural counties had spiked from 12.9 percent to 21.2 percent of the total.
The incidence of NAS among rural-born babies rose disproportionately compared with urban births. The incidence of NAS increased from 1.2 cases per 1,000 hospital births to 7.5 cases per 1,000 in rural areas. This represents a growth rate nearly 80 percent higher than that seen by urban hospitals, where the rate rose from 1.4 per 1,000 to 4.8 per 1,000.
Research also revealed an increase in deliveries complicated by maternal opioid use, from 1.3 per 1,000 to 8.1 per 1,000 in rural hospitals. Urban deliveries saw a rise of maternal opioid use of 1.6 per 1,000 to 4.8 per 1,000.
Researchers said the results pointed to the need for increased funding for programs and clinics in rural areas to help with treatment for both mothers and their babies. “Maternal opioid use requires special attention given the poor outcomes and high costs,” Dr. Villapiano said in a statement to the press. “If we can provide resources to the areas that need them the most, we can do more on the front lines to address the opioid crisis for our most vulnerable patients.”
Over the past two decades, opioid addiction has skyrocketed in the United States. Highly addictive prescription painkillers like Oxycontin and Vicodin flooded into the market, with pharmaceutical companies like Purdue Pharma and Cardinal Health deliberately targeting rural and poor sections of the population. One 2014 study found that low-income mothers on Medicaid were prescribed opioids—most frequently codeine and hydrocodone—at high rates for pregnancy-related pain like backaches and joint pain. A staggering 42 percent of pregnant Medicaid-recipients in Utah and 35 percent of those in Idaho were prescribed opioids.
As the price of prescription pills rose, many patients who had developed addictions to these powerful painkillers turned to street drugs like heroin, leading to a public health epidemic that now claims more lives in many places than automobile accidents and gun violence each year. According to data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 47,055 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2014, nearly two-thirds of them from opioid use.
The illegality of the drugs compound the social stigma of addiction for pregnant women, who may be afraid to seek basic prenatal health care for fear of being punished. Around the country, legislatures have pushed to criminalize the drug problems of mothers whose addictions may harm fetal development, while simultaneously restricting access to drug treatment and reproductive care. Many drug-addicted women are compelled to struggle with both addiction and pregnancy on their own.
Babies who are born with signs of opioid withdrawal require special care and extended hospital stays in neonatal care units. Often they have low birth weights and are at a higher risk for birth defects like spina bifida or gastroschisis, where internal organs are formed partially outside of a baby’s body. They suffer agonizing pain and often cry inconsolably and have seizures. Symptoms of NAS frequently include irritability, high heart rates, diarrhea, breathing problems, and difficulty latching onto the nipple of a bottle or breast.
The cost of caring for these babies is considerable, with hospital NAS treatment expenses rising from $732 million in 2007 to $1.5 billion in 2013, according to a study in the Journal of Perinatology. Small, rural hospitals are often understaffed and lack proper facilities to treat the rising numbers of NAS-afflicted infants.
“Typically, rural hospitals that deliver babies have traditionally focused on the lower-risk population in areas they serve,” Dr. Alison V. Holmes of the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth told the New York Times. “But when you’re getting to a point of having a substantial proportion of mothers taking opioids and babies at risk for opioid withdrawal, it becomes a strain on the regional system.” The New England Journal of Medicine published a study last year revealing that some neonatal units had to spend upwards of 20 percent of their staff hours caring for babies suffering from NAS.
THANKSGIVING 2016 THE LAST BEFORE THE REVOLUTION
STAGGERING ADDICTION and POVERTY IN AMERICA
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/11/staggering-poverty-in-america-under.html
THE TWISTED ROAD TO REVOLUTION CAME DOWN WALL STREET
FIRST
OBAMA –CLINTONOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH
"Between 2002 and 2015 annual earnings for the bottom 90 percent
of Americans rose by only 4.5 percent, while earnings for the top
1 percent grew by 22.7 percent, according to the Economic Policy
Institute. Under the Obama administration, more than 90 percent of
income gains since the so-called “recovery” began have gone to
the top one percent."
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/11/comes-revolution-class-struggle-in-us.html
“Our entire crony capitalist system, Democrat and Republican alike,
has become a kleptocracy approaching par with third-world hell-holes. This
is the way a great country is raided by its elite.”
---- Karen McQuillan THEAMERICAN THINKER.com
AMERICAN HAS FOUND MILLIONS OF JOBS FOR ILLEGALS AND BILLIONS FOR WELFARE.... BUT FOR AMERICANS... Nada!
“Behind this year’s surge is a toxic mix of cuts to social services, unemployment, hopelessness…”
Panic at America’s malls: Class tensions at the breaking point
Panic at America’s malls: Class tensions at the breaking point
By Eric London
28 December 2016
The scenes of chaos and panic that played out at more than 15 shopping malls across the United States on Monday convey the tense and explosive character of social life in America at the end of 2016.
What began as one of the busiest shopping days of the year ended with large-scale evacuations, dozens of arrests, numerous injuries and entire malls on police lockdown.
Heavily armed police cleared crowds of youth at a number of shopping malls, primarily those located in working-class neighborhoods. Bystander video shows hysterical shoppers running away as police armed with assault rifles and military helmets move in to subdue large groups of youth.
Though there is no indication that the gatherings of young people were coordinated, a remarkable pattern emerges from what can be pieced together about the separate events.
In the early evening, as the malls reached peak activity, hundreds of young people began to converge in what the youth billed as “fights” in social media posts. Small scuffles broke out between individual young people, most of whom were on winter break from high school, and the crowds grew larger.
Word passed and a mood of panic set in. Rumors of shooting incidents spread rapidly. Jittery onlookers interpreted loud noises as gunshots. There were many reports of people shouting, “Gun!” People were injured as thousands sought to flee the crowded malls for the perceived safety of their cars.
At a mall in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a local news program reported “chaotic panic and everybody running all at once” after the sound of a chair slamming into the floor was mistaken for gunfire. An eight-year-old and a 12-year-old were injured in the evacuation as police surrounded and entered the mall.
In Garden City, New York, where seven people were injured, eyewitnesses described a “stampede” after dozens of people called police, erroneously believing a shooting was taking place. In Newport News, Virginia, a local news organization reported that people “were running out of the mall screaming; some people feared for their lives after they heard rumors that someone was running around the mall with a gun.”
Police cleared two malls in Memphis, Tennessee and arrested seven youth after fights and false reports of shootings. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, youth set off firecrackers and “kicked off a wave of panic,” according to a CNN report. In Brentwood, Ohio, outside Cleveland, police placed a mall on lockdown and arrested a young person “for attempting to strike an officer that was dealing with another disorderly patron.” Police used pepper spray to disperse the crowd.
Five young men between the ages of 14 and 16 from Hartford, Connecticut, a largely impoverished city, were arrested at a mall in nearby Manchester, where officers called in backup from neighboring jurisdictions and descended on the facility to break up gatherings of hundreds of youth. Similar events took place in Farmington, Connecticut; Aurora, Illinois; Fort Worth, Texas; Syracuse, New York; Monroeville, Pennsylvania; Tempe, Arizona; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Aurora, Colorado, where police reported that over 500 youth “surrounded an off-duty officer” who was attempting to detain another youth.
Meanwhile, the city of Chicago was hit by the most deadly wave of shooting violence in twenty years, with 53 wounded and 11 killed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. As DNAInfo reported, “Behind this year’s surge is a toxic mix of cuts to social services, unemployment, hopelessness…”
Just hours before the mall disorders took place, and after the devastating weekend in Chicago, Obama was interviewed on CNN by David Axelrod, his former campaign manager. Amidst much laughter and mutual flattery, Obama touted his presidential tenure and presented himself as a fighter for social justice. “I would argue that during the entire eight years that I’ve been president, that spirit of America has still been there in all sorts of ways,” he declared.
In his end-of-the-year press conference on December 16, Obama spoke of “how far we’ve come over the past eight years,” before adding that “by so many measures, our country is stronger and more prosperous than it was when we started. That’s a situation that I’m proud to leave for my successor.”
The mall eruptions expose as a lie the saccharine picture of America painted by the corporate press and Obama as his administration draws to a close. That mini-riots took
place in fifteen different locations located
hundreds of miles from one another shows
that something is profoundly wrong with
America.
Monday’s free-for-all in Aurora, Colorado took place at the same mall where James Holmes killed 12 people and injured 70 others in July 2012. Since Obama took office, 122 people have been killed in school shootings alone. The response of the government has been two-fold: empty banalities and the militarization of the police.
Though concerns for their immediate safety may have provoked shoppers to take flight, the underlying anxieties are rooted in social relations that are dominated by the vast levels of economic inequality that loom over every aspect of life in the United States.
The outbursts of violence and fear took place against the backdrop of a holiday season ritualized by the media to conceal the brutal fact that all human relations are mediated through the buying and selling of commodities. While this process reaches a fever pitch at Christmas—the make-or-break period for retail profits—the commodification of human relations, with the general tension and frustration it produces, is essential to all social relations under capitalism.
The United States is a country dominated by a
financial oligarchy, both economically and
politically. The vast majority of the people
have no outlet for expressing their own social
interests. All of the official institutions,
including the corporate-controlled media, the
two big-business parties and the trade
unions, are dedicated to stifling social
opposition and generating higher corporate
profits.
Half of all high school students—those fifteen years of age and younger—have never lived a day when the United States was not at war. Completely abandoned by the political establishment and hostile to the wars, poverty, state surveillance and police violence that have dominated their entire conscious lives, those youth who were old enough to vote in the Democratic primary contests voted for the self-proclaimed “socialist” Bernie Sanders by a nine-to-one margin over Hillary Clinton.
In his interview with Axelrod, Obama did not even address the character of the incoming Trump administration, which is promising to be the most reactionary in US history. In three weeks, Trump and his cabal of billionaires, evangelicals, generals, fascists and close relatives will control the executive branch. The incoming administration has promised a nuclear arms race, an assault on Social Security, Medicare and public education, and the deportation of millions of immigrant workers and their families.
This holiday season, the vast majority of workers share neither the complacent and cynical optimism of Obama, nor the blind bullishness of the stock market. What took place in America’s malls on Monday provides an inkling of the profound social shocks on the horizon for 2017.
The mood that predominates in America as the year concludes is one of nervousness and frustration combined with an emerging combativeness that has yet to find a progressive political expression. What is needed is a movement of the working class to direct the coming social explosion in a revolutionary and socialist direction.
UNDER THE LA RAZA SUPREMACIST OBAMA, THE MEX
DRUG CARTELS NOW OPERATE BORDER TO
UNDEFENDED BORDER
Mexican cartel smugglers have taken full advantage of the system in order to maximize their profits from human smuggling as well as the smuggling of illegal aliens. In 2014, Mexico’s Gulf Cartel was able to make approximately $38 million in a matter of months off human smuggling alone.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/09/obama-floods-americas-open-borders-with.html
JUDICIAL WATCH:
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States. Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.”
AMERICA: NO LEGAL NEED APPLY
REPORT: The assault to finish off the American
middle-class is NOT over
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/report-illegals-taking-middle-and-high.html
“The report noted that many illegals don't have jobs or have difficulty in landing good jobs because of local laws.”
“However, it identified several states that have begun easing employment laws so that illegals can get a job.”
TRUMPERNOMICS:
"The collection of billionaires, bankers, CEOs, generals and social arch-reactionaries that will comprise his cabinet and White House inner circle is pledged to remove all constraints on the ability of the rich to plunder American society for their own personal gain and profit."
AMERICA:
One paycheck and two illegals away from
homelessness.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/america-one-paycheck-and-two-illegals.html
"The economists found that the pre-tax share of national income received by the
bottom half of the US population has been cut nearly in half since 1980, from 20
percent to 12 percent, while the income share of the top one percent has nearly
doubled, from 12 percent to 20 percent."
HEROIN!
MEXICO INVADES, LOOTS AND EXPANDS ITS HEROIN MARKETS IN AMERICA’S OPEN AND UNDEFENDED BORDERS
JUDICIAL WATCH:
“The greatest criminal threat to the daily lives of American citizens are the Mexican drug cartels.”
Much more here:
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-american-border-with-narcomex.html ……post on your face book
“Mexican drug cartels are the “other” terrorist threat to America. Militant Islamists have the goal of destroying the United States. Mexican drug cartels are now accomplishing that mission – from within, every day, in virtually every community across this country.”
TRUMP SIGNALS OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS THAT BETTER LOOTING IS UP AHEAD.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/trumps-bankster-driven-economy-more-of.html
The chief motivating factor behind the rise on Wall Street is the understanding that the incoming Trump administration will not only carry out policies to benefit the financial elites, but that responsibility for implementing this agenda will be in the hands of some its foremost representatives.
AMERICA DIES YOUNG, POOR AND ADDICTED!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/americas-slow-march-to-death-us-life.html
A Nation Commits Suicide
AMERICA’S STROLL TO CIVIL WAR II
The emphasis on class warfare, open borders, secularism, and
multiculturalism at the expense of Americanism by not only the
Democratic Party, but by their cohorts in the media and
universities has led to a very divided America with each having a
separate vision for the United States. The Left as represented by the
Democratic Party seeks an open-border stateless America where
anyone who sets foot on our soil is free to practice their branch of
identity within our borders and with no allegiance to American
sovereignty.
TRUMPERNOMICS: Serving the Rich, the
Greedy and the Crooked.
TRUMP’S CABINET OF STOOGES, LOOTERS
and CRONIES
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/trump-promises-wall-street-more-obama.html
Puzder’s nomination is of a piece with Trump’s other cabinet choices. Betsy DeVos, an enemy of public education, has been selected to head the Department of Education. Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon known for his antipathy towards government “interference” in housing regulation, has been nominated as the Housing and Urban Development Secretary.
ANDREW PUZDER:
ENEMY OF THE AMERICAN WORKER and
ADVOCATE FOR OPEN BORDERS
TRUMP'S OPEN BORDERS AND AMNESTY/ NON-ENFORCEMENT POLICIES WILL HELP KEEP THE HAMBURGER INDUSTRY WELL STOCKED WITH "CHEAP" LABOR ILLEGALS.... The America people will then be forced to pay the REAL cost of all that staggeringly expensive labor
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/donald-trump-advances-obama-clinton.html
“Yet Andrew Puzder, the chief executive of the company that operates Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, has been chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as labor secretary.”
“Mr. Puzder, however, has been adamantly opposed to a meaningful increase in the federal minimum wage, which is $7.25 an hour. Mr. Trump has said he could stomach an increase to $10, which is still abysmal.”
“Here is the record at those restaurants. When the Obama Labor Department looked at thousands of complaints involving fast-food workers, it found labor law violations in 60 percent of the investigations at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, usually for failure to pay the minimum wage or time and a half for overtime.”
HOW MANY HAMBURGER JOINTS HIRE legals????
FIXING AMERICA’S UNEMPLOYMENT CRISIS:
How many jobs in your community are held by foreign born?
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/fixing-americas-unemployment-crisis.html
SHOCKING REPORT!
THE STAGGERING ILLEGAL INVASION: INVADE, MURDER, RAPE, BREED ANCHOR BABIES FOR WELFARE and VOTE DEM FOR MORE!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/americas-illegal-invasion-damning-report.html
The report was apparently completed in May, leading some to suspect that the Obama administration did not want it released for fear that it would bolster Donald Trump’s call for a border wall.
This new report, whose full text the Center for Immigration Studies has now obtained, estimates that nearly half of illegal aliens slip through the southern border undetected.
TRUMP VOWS TO KEEP OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERS LOOTING
MNUCHIN: THE FORECLOSURE MACHINE!
http://the-trump-white-house.blogspot.com/2016/11/mnuchin-trump-vows-to-keep-obamas-crony.html
The FDIC paid OneWest $1 billion, which Stein said went to “billionaire investors … to cover the close of foreclosing on working class, everyday American folks.”
“But the bank came under fire for its foreclosure practices as housing advocacy groups accused it of being too quick to foreclose on struggling homeowners. In 2011, dozens of demonstrators descended on Mnuchin's $26.5 million home in he wealthy Bel Air neighborhood to protest OneWest's eviction tactics, according to the Los Angeles Times.”
TRUMPERnomics:
AFTER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS, THE LOOTING OF AMERICA BY THE RICH TO CONTINUE UNDER THEIR OWN, DONALD TRUMP
TRUMP FILLS THE “SWAMP” WITH CRONY BILLIONAIRES!
http://the-trump-white-house.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-billionaires-club-at-trump-white.html
"Far from Trump’s demagogic claims that he would 'drain the swamp,' the corrupt nexus between Wall Street and Washington is tighter than ever."
OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS is now the new TRUMPERnomics!
TRUMP VOWS TO SERVE THE RICH WITH SUPER OBAMA-CLINTONIMCS!
There is a vast chasm between this empty populist rhetoric and the personnel that Trump has selected to populate his government. The speech followed a series of cabinet picks, including billionaire asset strippers, Wall Street bankers, and dedicated opponents of financial and corporate regulations, public education and Medicare and Medicaid, to lead the Treasury, Commerce, Education and Health and Human Services departments.
http://the-trump-white-house.blogspot.com/2016/12/more-obama-clintonomics-ahead-trump.html
TRUMP IMPOSES OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS: Cut Federal Pensions and Medicare to Cover Tax Cuts For the Super Rich
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/11/trump-and-paul-ryan-conspire-to-assault.html
"Trump is not the initiator of this class war against working people. It has been underway for decades, beginning in earnest with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and continuing under every succeeding administration, including the eight-year tenures of Democrats Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The colossal redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom to the top of American society reached record proportions under Obama, whose legacy of falling living standards and worsening economic crisis for tens of millions of workers was a decisive factor in the victory of the fascistic demagogue and con artist Trump."
AMERICA THE ADDICTED: 1 in 7 are addicted
CAUTION: GRAPHIC IMAGES!
MEXICO’S BIGGEST EXPORTS TO U.S.: Heroin, Criminals, Anchor baby breeders for 18 years of gringo-paid welfare.
1 in 7 are addicted
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/11/addicted-america-1-of-7-addicted.html
AMERICA’S LAST DAYS AS THE MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS’ OPEN BORDERS MARKET
BE PREPARED!
THE FASTEST GROWING POLITICAL PARTY IN AMERICA IS THE MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA. IT IS AN AMERICAN TAX SUPPORTED POLITICAL PARTY.
15 THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT LA RAZA “THE RACE”
by Michelle Malkin
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2012/06/obamas-part-base-of-la-raza-15-things.html
"The American Southwest seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without firing a single shot." --- EXCELSIOR --- national newspaper of Mexico
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/12/michelle-malkin-15-things-every-legal.html
THE GIG JOB ECONOMY
…. To keep wages DEPRESSED
As Barack Obama invites hordes to jump our borders jobs, welfare offices and voting booths…. WHAT IS LEFT FOR THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS HE HATES SO MUCH?
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-gig-economy-america