The Atlantic has an interesting story on the high rate of C-sections among Brazilian women:
Doctors and activists here say Borges’s experience is fairly common among women who give birth in the country’s private hospitals, where 82 percent of all babies are born by C-section. Brazil has a free, public healthcare system, but many of its wealthier residents–about a quarter of the population–use a private insurance scheme that functions much like the U.S. medical system.
With the higher price of the private system comes better amenities and shorter wait times, but also all of the trappings of fee-for-service medical care. C-sections can be easily scheduled and quickly executed, so doctors schedule and bill as many as eight procedures a day rather than wait around for one or two natural births to wrap up.
It seems they don’t make them like they used to.