Rural America's Maternal-Health Crisis Is About to Get Worse (theatlantic.com)

> Rural family doctors can and do still deliver babies in the absence of ob-gyns. But the proportion of generalist doctors willing and trained to do so has been declining for decades. Many family physicians I met while touring rural areas as part of a Brookings and American Enterprise Institute commission on rural life cited liability risks as the motivator of their retreat from maternity care. Adverse birth outcomes are among the most common claims against physicians in medical-malpractice lawsuits, and awarded judgments can be very high, which inflates the liability-insurance premiums that doctors must pay. In addition, in places with few ob-gyns, a generalist is more likely to have to handle high-risk cases without expert help.

Simple Idea: Very sharply limit lawsuits against medical professionals and organizations who are acting as "last ditch" providers of essential care.

Rural America voted for that policy. What's your point?

An obvious solution - one strongly lobbied against by the American Medical Association, the major professional organization for doctors in the USA, since its founding - is to increase the number of doctors. The 10 countries ranked by the OECD with the most doctors per capita have from 4.6 to 6.6 doctors per 1000 residents. The United States has 2.7 per 1000. [1]

How to do it?

- Educate more doctors.

- Allow more doctors trained abroad to obtain licenses.

- Allow paraprofessionals to do more, freeing M.D.s for the work requiring the most training.

And how to make it possible?

- Drastically reduce the ability of lobbyists for big-money interests and major campaign donors to influence legislation and the actions of the executive branch.

[1] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2025/11/health-at-a-gla...