No health benefits from breast-feeding
 

according to the IRS

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/27/bu...east.html?_r=1

:mad2: nuts. absolutely insane.

Seconded.

I see their logic. They view breast milk as a healthy food, not medicine. They also won't let you buy a frying pan with your medical flexible spending account money so you can cook up some healthy salmon.

But breast-feeding is indicated in reducing the risk of breast cancer.......

Yeah, if it were up to me, I'd include them. It's not like it's going to bankrupt the government. And you buy them at a drug store, not a grocery store. But I agree with their point that breast milk is food, not medicine.

But you're not buying the milk. you're buying the apparatus to help you breast feed

Just as buying artificial turf because your kid is allergic to grass. Acupuncture. Swedish Penis Enlarger.

And this (from IRS website Pub 502 for 2009):

Meals
You can include in medical expenses the cost of meals at a hospital or similar institution if a principal reason for being there is to get medical care.

You cannot include in medical expenses the cost of meals that are not part of inpatient care.

Obviously the infant formula lobby can kick the living shit out of the breast pump manufacturer's lobby with one arm tied behind its back.

Did you really think this has anything to do with logic and reason, or were you being
(choose all that apply)
a)Rhetorical
b)Ironical
c)sarcastical

This could have been a perfect example of the incentives Clod was talking about in another post.

Hmmm, me thinks the formula industry whispered in their ear.

EDIT: Goddamn it Foot, if only I'd pushed enter sooner.

Fish is healthy for you. Should a fishing pole be covered?

I'm not arguing against pumps, because I think they are great, but a pump is there for convenience. The breasts work just fine for delivering the food directly to the baby. The pump is there so the baby can get the same healthy food even if the mom has to be somewhere else.

Other baby convenience items like diapers are not covered.

If breast feeding lowers risks for cancer, then that's a good argument, but then you also need to make sex toys for men be covered, because masturbation lowers risks for prostate cancer. Maybe an old dude just needs his Real Doll to get off.

It's interesting that programs to help you stop smoking are covered, so there is precedence for paying for things that lower your risk of cancer.

Well I don't know if any of those are actually covered, maybe acupuncture, but there are some interesting things that are covered, like high spf sunscreen.

Well, is the act of fishing good for you? as in, does it have documented health benefits for the entire group of people who undertake that activity vs those who don't?

Breast feeding, I do believe is the ultimate health benefit that millions of babies just aren't getting. If breast pumps were 'incenitfied', then maybe more women would be inclined to do it and then maybe more babies would grow into healthier adults.

I agree. This gets into the same idea as Clodfobble's posts to create incentives for healthy food. Blueberries should be cheap, and ramen noodles should be expensive.

The astroturf thing was in the article and the acupunture was on the IRS website. The Penis Enlarger was completely a product of my vivid imagination. :p:

Good arguments for paid 3-month maternity leaves and for "Take your baby to work" programs.

Years ago, the science was that the antibodies from the Mom passed to the Baby were only in the colostrum (first milk), so unless the science has changed, I don't see the argument for preventing infections, etc. out to 6 months.

I do think there are psychological benefits of keeping the Mom and Baby together, but sometimes the emotional arguments for breast-feeding sometimes seem to go overboard. e.g., preventing cancer

Oh...give it time. And Viagra will make it on the list, too. :rolleyes:

but remember, we only care about the boobies.

Srsly, i don't have a problem with it. If a doctor will sign off on it as a health benefit, it should be included. Of course there will be crooked doctors who will help people screw the system. but this already happens. Why make nursing working mothers they people who have to pay for that?

yup, your science is a little out of date.

And I think that's the bottom line. I would agree wholeheartedly with that. Whatever "it" is.

It probably is covered under "drugs" but at least in this case, unlike most medical insurance, it does not then exclude birth control. [/end serious part]

[begin sarcastical part] Hey, a guy needs to get his rocks off. It's healthier for society, so they don't go on rampages and stuff (you don't believe that, do you guys? That you're such animals? Yeah, i don't either.) ;)

Anyhoo, it's only about the pumps. I think women could do without them, as a medical supply. Just squeeze boobehs really hard into a large bowl then, using a funnel, transfer milk to an old water bottle. If you can't afford a funnel you can use a SNANK bag. Water bottles can be found in your nearby landfill.

:lol:

right. I seriously doubt many doctors would refuse to sign off on a breast pump regardless of whether the health reasons were dietary or otherwise or the benefits for mother or baby or both. Unfortunately, this is a sensible solution.

Oh Please. Emotional?? Thats underhanded.

READ THIS:

If only it were that simple. For most women it isn't. I got lucky, 'cause that breastpumping thing aint a whole wheelbarrow load of joy in my experience.

Maybe doctors should only sign off on things that hurt a whole shitload. 'Cause then we know they're good for you....?

No, just outdated. But he admitted that himself.

Monster, he used 'emotional' deliberately because it is associated with women, or maybe its just ingrained in him...he is from an older generation. Go ahead and give him a pass if you want, but it was a stupid word to choose.

Oh, I couldn't even imagine. I bet it really does hurt.

Ultrasounds are better detectors of breast cancer than mammograms and hurt a lot less, but you know...women can handle anything. Oh, and an ultrasound is more expensive. Soon women will go back to pushing out a baby in their family's backyard and, after a five minute rest period, get back to beating clothes against the rocks in the creek.

oh no pass from me, being out of date is not an excuse, I was just rubbing it in :D And thanks for finding a link -I was too lazy/busy trying to find out the latest about the bank robbery.....

One size doesn't fit all. I can't eat blueberries. I'd end up in the hospital. But I can eat ramen, if I sift out the green flakey stuff. You're going to penalize me for having Crohn's?

The world is a complex place.

Maybe if you had been breastfed, you wouldn't have Crohn's now.

j/k

(sort of)

Even if every doctor signed off on every pump, it wouldn't amount to jack shit for the government's coffers, whereas it could be a significant help for the pumper.
But more than that, it would be the right thing for the IRS to do.

It's possible. Statistics show that industrialized nations have a much higher incidence of Crohn's. But they don't know why that is.

On the other hand, this was the 50s and my mother smoked through the pregnancy and after. I don't know what the relative merits of breast feeding would be in that case.

It would give her a chance to sit and have a cigarette. ;)

Yeah, my Mom smoked too. Thats probably why we are all so short...:sniff:.

I actually wouldn't be surprised if industrialized nations actually had higher breastfeeding rates, thanks to the immorality of the formula industry and the relative advertising naïveté of the third world.

:lol:

Even the sickest babies benefit from breast-feeding

I had so much milk I should have hired myself out as a wet nurse.

wtf @ the IRS

Never too late to start. You're only as young as you feel!

Hey! My best friend died on 911 from DSB (deadly semen backup)

I'd think that would be a very recent reversal then. The whole babyfood industry began life in the industrialised world. They had a huge impact on parenting patterns in Britain, Europe and America. I remember my mum telling me that when she was growing up, powdered babymilk was seen as a healthier option: it was 'scientifically' balanced :P

There's a massive legacy from that. Rates of breastfeeding in inner-city areas are often shockingly low. The area I represent in council, is mainly white working-class and suffers from all the problems of a deprived area with high unemployment. Breastfeeding rates there are slowly coming up, but only because the local health trust and the council have been working together to promote it and outreach new young mums.

Think about what we give out little girls to play with: baby dolls, with little milkbottles. And think about how long we have been doing that as a society. Breastfeeding has always been culturally problematic. Wealthy medieval ladies gave their babies to a paid wetnurse to suckle. It was seen as entirely inappropriate for them to feed their children themselves.

The craze for the 'natural' in the 18th century made it terribly fashionable for a while for ladies to breastfeed.

During the 19th and 20th centuries the 'scientific' approach took over, first off giving us the scientifically sanctioned need to breastfeed; then by giving us the scientically sanctioned need to feed them a more balanced diet than women's bodies could provide, then finally to a scientific imperative to breastfeed.

Unfortunately the weight of years against breastfeeding in recent history still outweighs the that for it: even if the science is stronger.

Truth is 'breasts' have always been cultural and political signifiers. From the taxonomical studies of breastsize conducted during the 18th century voyages of Captain Cook and his ilk, in which the size and shape of women's breasts were employed as a measure of a race's evolutionary stage; to the legal ban on showing them in public; and to the moral outrage applied by society to each successive generation of women because they were or because they were not breastfeeding.

Few things in a society's development are as politicised as what makes a 'mother' and what makes a 'father'. Breastfeeding is one of those central issues of motherhood. Revolutionary ideology, conservative rhetoric, feminist perspectives, paternalistic proscriptions: all have at various historical juncures been mapped onto the woman's maternal role and in particuar the feeding of her child. From the 18th Century 'Mothers of the Nation' to depictions of nations through a female figure; with cartoonists and polemicists employing the image of the nursing mother to comment on everything from internal political strife, to international relations.

@ Dana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

http://multinationalmonitor.org/hype...4/formula.html

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/formula.htm

http://www.babymilkaction.org/CEM/compseptoct01.html

http://www.babymilkaction.org/CEM/compseptoct01.html

I'm not doubting the manufacturers' campaigns nor the effect on those countries. I'm saying that the situation in the west isn't as rosy as all that.

Figures for Britain from 2005 show that:
http://www.babyfriendly.org.uk/page.asp?page=21


For Congo the rates of exclusive breastfeeding in the same year were 24% for the first 4 months, and 19% up to 6 months

For Ethiopia the figures were 57% for first 4 months and 49% up to six months.


The cultural reach that artificial food has in those countries is huge: but the cultural reach it had over here up until the 70s was vast. They are dealing with a recent development: we are still affected by earlier developments, even though attitudes have changed.

One of the best little books I've read is Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village ,
about a Peace Core volunteer who went to a village way off the nearest road with only a notebook and a simple scale.

Her job was to weigh babies and assist mothers in breastfeeding because the ground water was so contaminated
that mixing the baby formula distributed by NGO's was causing illness and deaths.

It's an inspiring account of what a young woman can do all by herself.

No matter what the IRS or formula companies say, breastfeeding has been successful for millenia, or we wouldn't be here now. The incidence of heart disease and high cholestrol would be drastically reduced if all human babies were raised on human mother's milk. It is high in cholestrol, and the babies bodies develop a means of using it and controling it. Feeding kids homoginized cows milk is not good.

There is a related but different issue about human milk for adult consumption. I've seen (but couldn't be bothered to look up) studies that indicate it has considerable health benefits. However, the ethical and other issues involved are many and complicated. I couldn't start to do them justice.

I thought of starting a thread but I mostly dwell on weekends now so I won't be about to follow it up. Someone else can if they are interested.

Suuuuuure that's what they were doing.

There're some fascinating articles about this stuff. Some of the 'travelogue' style literature that was being produced during the 16th-18th centuries was amazing.

Absolutely, most especially for gastrointestinal diseases. We actually looked into what it would take to get my kids back on it--aside from all the moms who sell it, there are tons who give it away if you can show it's for a medical treatment. But we couldn't find a donor who adhered to a diet minus all their allergens.

Breast feeding vs bottle feeding and the amount of rest one gets. I think this woman looks pretty darn restful.

nsfw

http://healthland.time.com/2010/11/0...WBeditorspicks

nsfw

I didn't read the article, but the title indicated Breast feeding moms get as much or little rest (sleep) as bottle feeding moms. Do they discuss Co-Sleeping moms versus moms who sleep apart. I bet co sleeping moms get more sleep and rest than moms who sleep apart.

You mean from the father?

Oh yeah.