$13 to $20 billion a year could be saved in health care costs by demedicalizing childbirth, developing midwifery, and encouraging breastfeeding.

Oski’s estimate frames childbirth practices as a major driver of health-care spending and argues that many costs arise from treating normal birth as a medical problem. By urging “demedicalizing childbirth,” expanding midwifery, and promoting breastfeeding, the quote links lower-intervention maternity care and early infant nutrition to both improved outcomes and systemic savings. The underlying significance is policy-oriented: it treats maternal–infant care as an area where preventive, community-based approaches (rather than routine high-technology hospital intervention) could reduce expenditures while supporting maternal autonomy and infant health.