New York, Michael Bloomberg, US media tycoon and a Democratic presidential contender, has unveiled his plan to address maternal mortality and reduce racial disparity in pregnancy-related deaths.
The plan, announced while the former New York City mayor was campaigning on Monday in Alabama, includes measures such as addressing the racial bias among health care providers, standardizing maternal mortality data collection, providing a free, public-option insurance plan, Xinhua news agency reported.
Bloomberg’s campaign attributed the reason for women of colour in Alabama facing disproportionate “risk of dying from pregnancy-related causes” vis-a-vis their white counterparts to the state not having expanded Medicaid under the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, a failure it said “leaves out 314,000 people from the programme”.
The US “cannot accept the disgraceful racial inequality in maternal health care that exists in Alabama and across the country”, Bloomberg said.
In a tweet also on Monday, the former Mayor blamed President Donald Trump’s administration for “restricting women’s access to reproductive & sexual health services, & worsening the disparities in care between white & African American women”.
Bloomberg announced his bid for the presidency in late November.
According to media reports, he has spent about $120 million on campaign ads so far.
