It’s time for the US to consider doing the same
In America, even irreligious Jews still embrace this initiation rite. Some blame peer pressure: “I didn’t want him to look weird,” my brother-in-law explained about his newborn son.
So what explains America’s fuss over foreskins? A closer look at how this religious rite became a national practice reveals some uncomfortable truths about health care in the US. Apparently, all it takes to popularize an elective preventative surgery with questionable health benefits is a mix of perverse incentives, personal bias, and ignorance.
Johnson, the University of Michigan professor of obstetrics and gynecology, observes that the procedure is “highly remunerative” for the pediatricians at his hospital.
“I think the professional charge in our state is somewhere between $150-200,” he says. “That’s real money if you can do four or five circumcisions in an hour.” In states where Medicaid does not cover the practice, rates have fallen fast.
Elsewhere, however, uncircumcised physicians are better placed to appreciate this elastic, functional sleeve of tissue, which is not only tremendously sexually sensitive but also handy for protecting the head of the penis from abrasion. Government-financed health care also squeezes out costly discretionary practices, making it easier for doctors in other developed countries to see that a prophylactic surgery on healthy, non-consenting infants is not quite the most conservative, least harmful way of achieving certain results. Some uncircumcised boys will still run the risk of phimosis, but the risk is rare. A new population-based study from Denmark, where most boys are uncircumcised, found that medical necessity forced a foreskin intervention in a mere .5% of Danish boys.