Infants fighting for their lives shouldn’t also have to fight insurance barriers to get optimal nutrition. That’s the message behind a bill recently introduced by U.S. Rep. Morgan McGavery.

The following commentary was written by Dr. Eddie Chang, MD, MBA urging the Pennsylvania Legislature to vote for Medicaid coverage for an exclusive human milk diet for our most vulnerable babies.  The Pennsylvania Legislature is scheduled to vote on SB 500 in the coming weeks.  

A new study confirms what mothers and doctors have long believed: human milk is the best source of nutrition for infants.  

Neonatal intensive care units can look like something out of science fiction. Blinking lights, machines, tubes, lines, alerts and a steady stream of people coming and going can be confusing and frightening to parents of preemies.

Everyone knows children inherit some things from their parents: their blue eyes, their curly hair, or perhaps their love of the outdoors. Moms take prenatal vitamins and get maternal vaccines like Tdap to transfer health benefits and good antibodies to their unborn babies.

It’s perhaps the oldest partnership in health care – safeguarding an expectant mother through pregnancy, assisting with the miracle of birth, and caring for the new mother and infant afterward. And increasingly, each stage of the process entails doctors treating patients remotely over high-speed internet and telecom connections.

America’s maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the developed world. It’s a crisis of epic proportions. And like many other crises, not all Americans are equitably affected.

Working in the NICU, I have observed a wide range of challenges affecting late preterm infants. But perhaps the most concerning is difficulty eating.

It fosters brain development. It passes on antibodies. It lowers the risk of infection. Human milk has long been known to offer many benefits to babies, especially to those born prematurely.