In her Reproducing Race: An Ethnography of Pregnancy as a Site of Racialization, Khiara Bridges describes the business of pregnancy in the hospital environment of Alpha Hospital in New York. Bridges discusses the factors that contribute to a women’s pregnancy becoming an isolating and sometimes....experience. This in turn comes to affect how women are treated in Alpha hospital. Race, income and how society views women are important elements amongst a myriad of other factors in Bridges argument that shape a women’s pregnancy and experience in Alpha hospital. In this paper the intersection between a woman’s body, Medicaid and race will be discussed using the frame of society’s opinion and the case example of Alpha Hospital.
In the postmodern …show more content…
Yet, they do not have to subject themselves to the many hurdles of intrusive testing and questioning like a Medicaid recipient with an “unruly body” does (Bridges 2011: 16, 65). This is as far as the state and society will reach into their pregnancy and where the image of a pregnant woman changes. When comparing the two images of a woman who is privately insured compared to a woman on Medicaid, poverty amongst other adjectives are used to distinguish women on Medicaid. With poverty comes the idea perpetuated in hospitals such as Alpha Hospital of a “high-risk population” of patients that are exposed to a larger set of hazards (Bridges 2011: …show more content…
At the individual level, medical providers seem to use Medicaid as a marker for a patient population that generally could show a higher risk of illness or complication. The behavior of the staff in Alpha Hospital came to little surprise in my opinion because of the image that they have of women on Medicaid. Her work puts perspective to the way that patients are stigmatized and automatized to a level where the individual cannot expect personalized care with Medicaid. But rather, expect a large panel of intrusive questioning and testing repeatedly that seems to be done like clockwork in Alpha Hospital. At a larger level this ethnography illustrates that faults that exist in the government program that restricts the mobility and the voice of the Medicaid recipient. Not only does the pregnant woman on Medicaid have to be savvy at playing the system to her benefit but be very willing to offer up personal information for scrutiny to the state and to the
In the postmodern …show more content…
Yet, they do not have to subject themselves to the many hurdles of intrusive testing and questioning like a Medicaid recipient with an “unruly body” does (Bridges 2011: 16, 65). This is as far as the state and society will reach into their pregnancy and where the image of a pregnant woman changes. When comparing the two images of a woman who is privately insured compared to a woman on Medicaid, poverty amongst other adjectives are used to distinguish women on Medicaid. With poverty comes the idea perpetuated in hospitals such as Alpha Hospital of a “high-risk population” of patients that are exposed to a larger set of hazards (Bridges 2011: …show more content…
At the individual level, medical providers seem to use Medicaid as a marker for a patient population that generally could show a higher risk of illness or complication. The behavior of the staff in Alpha Hospital came to little surprise in my opinion because of the image that they have of women on Medicaid. Her work puts perspective to the way that patients are stigmatized and automatized to a level where the individual cannot expect personalized care with Medicaid. But rather, expect a large panel of intrusive questioning and testing repeatedly that seems to be done like clockwork in Alpha Hospital. At a larger level this ethnography illustrates that faults that exist in the government program that restricts the mobility and the voice of the Medicaid recipient. Not only does the pregnant woman on Medicaid have to be savvy at playing the system to her benefit but be very willing to offer up personal information for scrutiny to the state and to the