🕳️Incentives Matter: Baby Delivery Edition
From the Glimpse trendspotting email:
The rate of C-section baby deliveries around the world has grown more than 300% over the past 30 years alone.
This drastic growth is in part due to medical billing. Doctors are paid about 15% more to deliver babies via C-section than via birth canal, as the operation is then classified as a major surgery. And because C-sections take less time, doctors can perform more of them per day, leading to greater earnings.
Numerous studies have found that C-sections spike around morning, lunchtime, and the end of the day, spikes that are attributed to doctors’ scheduling pressures like going home and heading out to lunch. Doctors also get sued less when performing C-sections compared to traditional delivery.