Lack of health insurance kills 6 times as many Americans/year as 9/11 Did

[Jcrowley]

If America's So Great, Where's Our Health Care?

Lack of health insurance kills six times as many Americans each year as 9/11 did.

By Sarah Ruth van Gelder
09/23/06 "YES! Magazine" -- -- For Joel Segal, it was the day he was kicked out of George Washington Hospital, still on an IV after knee surgery, without insurance, and with $100,000 in medical debt. For Kiki Peppard, it was having to postpone needed surgery until she could find a job with insurance -- it took her two years. People all over the United States are waking up to the fact that our system of providing health care is a disaster.

An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured. The uninsured are excluded from services, charged more for services, and die when medical care could save them -- an estimated 18,000 die each year because they lack medical coverage.

But it's not only the uninsured who suffer. Of the more than 1.5 million bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, about half are a result of medical bills; of those, three-quarters of filers had health insurance.

Businesses are suffering too. Insurance premiums increased 73 percent between 2000 and 2005, and per capita costs are expected to keep rising. The National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) estimates that, without reform, national health care spending will double over the next 10 years. The NCHC is not some fringe advocacy group -- its co-chairs are Congressmen Robert D. Ray (R-IA) and Paul G. Rogers (D-FL), and it counts General Electric and Verizon among its members.

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1498

[MelissaB]

1. I just lost a first cousin because of lack of insurance.

[panader0]

2. I have zero insurance, medical or otherwise

It would be nice to have, but I have seen many examples when people who are insured are denied their benefits for some reason in the small print. Look at the Katrina victims. The insurance companiers say that flooding is not caused by a hurricane. When some punks broke into my dad's house, the insurance wouldn't pay off bacause the punks were supposed to pay restitution. (Over three years) I HATE insurance companies! They are one of the biggest rip-offs in this country.

[indepat]

3. With the +/- $1T spent annually to keep us safe from terraists, health

care will just have to languish along with decent jobs, the economy, and environment.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. K&R

:kick:

[msongs]

5. cigarettes kile 133 times as many yet there is no WAR on tobacco nt

[Zynx]

6. Just regular run of the mill homicide kills over 3x as many.

Yet the focus on reducing crime has lessened.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Now homicide of your own, that IS treason.

[area51]

8. healthcare

The U.S. is a barbaric nation, condemning to death people who can't afford medical care. We're the only industrialized nation that doesn't offer some sort of single-payer healthcare.

For lurking nazis, pay attention: if we were to have single-payer, it would make us more competitive as a nation, because we currently have a sicker workforce because people can't afford medical care. Also, single-payer would free people from being chained to jobs they hate & allow them to start their own companies; nazis always claim they love entrepreneurship.

[rainbow4321]

9. Uninsured=crappy care

Seen it first hand at our facility. Emergency rooms will admit ANYone for ANYthing if they have insurance/Medicare. "Sycope" (fancy word for "feeling dizzy")? Insured people get a 3+ day hospital stay, CAT scans, MRI's, every lab work imaginable, various consults, stress tests, ultrasounds of the carotids to check for blockage. You really don't even have to have "syncope"..I've seen "near syncope" as the main diagnosis---what does that mean? "Almost dizzy".

A few weeks ago:
Uninsured African American man arrives <after found collapsed in his front yard, shortness of breath, tilting to one side) blood pressure literally **over** 200/100. Gets a single BP pill to bring own the blood pressure and immediately sent home, told to go to his doctor later in the week. He came back 2 days later to our ER. STROKED OUT. Unresponsive. Can't talk. Total care, can't even turn himself in bed. He gets admitted and stays for a week. Did the hospital save themselves any money? No...he still ended up in the hospital. Did they destroy this man's life. Yes. Forever. The ER paperwork showed during the first visit the staff's focus was his asthma (even though his oxygen level was fine). Said he was "short of breath" because of it. BP was just a side issue, no real concern. Reality: The BP pill got the BP down long enough to get him put out the front door and make the paperwork look good w/ a normal blood pressure.


One more case cuz this whole thing really gets me riled.
Hispanic man, no insurance, found in a field very, very intoxicated.
Ends up admitted. Blood pressure issues start to show up. He gets medicine ordered to be given every 2 hours if his BP shoots up past a certain level. We give it. It is doing NOTHING to get his BP to a safe level. Gets it just below the ordered parameters (160/90). We tell the docs meds not working. They don't care. They are happy with 160's/90's. They order him pills to take after discharge and make plans to send him home. Do we do a trial run of these pills in the hospital to see if they work? To see if the BP responds well to the new pills? Nope. Docs rationale: He won't take the medicine, anyway....Once he leaves the facility he will be back to his old ways. Part of the discharge orders "call patient a cab" (hospital has cab vouchers for patients w/ no way to get "home").


It's really sickening to see how hospitals can turn treat humans so differently..all dependent on a person's insured/uninsured status.

[davsand]

11. "Dependent on a person's insured/uninsured status..."

This was in LBN in the last week or so:

"Illinois Woman's ER Wait Death Ruled Homicide

Long ER Waits Plague Nation's Hospitals

Sept. 17, 2006 — - In July, forty-nine-year old Beatrice Vance arrived in the Vista Medical Center Emergency Room in Lake County, Ill., complaining of nausea, shortness of breath and chest pains.

A nurse saw her briefly and told her to wait. But two hours later, when her name was finally called, the staff found Vance slumped in a chair, already dead..."

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/print?id=2454685


Dunno if she was uninsured or not, but I do know that the majority of people that DON'T have insurance end up in the ER ultimately if they want to access health care and can't find a free clinic in the area. THAT is how it works when you have no access to preventive care or routine care for chronic conditions like High Blood Pressure or Diabetes.

You wait until it has become an emergency situation, debate at home if you are sick enough to die/go into permanent debt to the medical establishment, and THEN you go to the ER and wait. We have people DYING in this nation because they are sitting at home trying to self-diagnose.

That long wait ANYONE has when they aren't delivered to the ER via an ambulance is due, in part, to the uninsured folks who have to go there, so you can pretty much say that our US health care system IS killing people without them ever giving anybody a chance to screw up a diagnosis.

Oh--and did I mention the non-profit hospitals we ALL support with property tax subsidies when we allow them to be tax exempt as a "charity?" If they don't pay it, you most certainly do as a property owner or even in your rent as a renter. Those non-profit, or "charity" hospitals screen for insured people--giving them preference--because they know they'll get paid for treating those patients.

Similarly, they get special treatment by the IRS.

Those same on-profit "charity" hospitals use collect-trolls to harass and abuse people who miss payments on a hospital bill--that is AFTER they've been billed at a higher rate than the ones who are insured, BTW.

Yeah, we have some serious problems in this country.



Laura

[dogday]

10. Freaking health care is outrageous

even for group... We are paying close to $600.00 a month for family care....

They treat you differently when you have insurance...

[robertpaulsen]

12. Send this to Michael Moore, this story belongs in Sicko!

9/11 X 6 happens every year in America, yet it's rare when this issue is the primary focus of our politicians. This needs to change!

[Jcrowley]

14. This issue

should be one of the top issues on the Dem platform. I personally would like to see massive cuts in Pentagon spending placed at the top, which would open many doors for necessary social programs, but putting Universal Health Care out there as a primary point on the platform would resonate with an astounding number of American including many who are Repubs. The Dem leadership knows this, there are numerous polls, surveys that substantiate this. The only conclusion one can draw is that they are more interested in the insurance slush funds and do not care for us uninsured.

[struggle4progress]

13. Study Finds Nearly 200,000 Deaths Annually from Hospital Errors

August 12, 2004

An average of 195,000 Americans died annually in 2000, 2001 and 2002 because of potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors, according to a study of 37 million patient records conducted by HealthGrades, a healthcare quality company.

The "HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals" looked at the mortality and economic impact of medical errors and injuries that occurred during Medicare hospital admissions nationwide from 2000 to 2002.

The number of deaths was nearly double that found iin the 1999 Institute of Medicine study "To Err is Human," with an associated cost of more than $6 billion per year. At the time the study was issued, the IOM said the rate of in-hospital deaths should be considered a national epidemic ...

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/hospital_errors.html

At this rate, a million Americans have died from hospital medical errors since 9/11/01 ...

[chelaque liberal]

18. Cost cutting is definitely a factor .

I have been a nurse for 16 years and I can tell you that we are spread so thin that it is a miracle that the number isn't higher.

Last spring I was pulled to an area that I had never worked before, without any orientation, due to short staffing. I had made one medication error in my entire career until that point, but that day I made two. I used to be proud of the quality of care I gave. Now I consider it a good day if I don't make a mistake.

[struggle4progress]

20. Are you unionized?

[chelaque liberal]

21. No union in TN

[struggle4progress]

22. SEIU Local 205 is Tennesee's largest and fastest-growing public sector and

and healthcare workers union.

We are comprised of over 4,000 private and public sector workers who work primarily in three areas:

Public Employees
Hospital and Home Care Workers
Industrial Trades

SEIU Local 205 is active in Nashville, Oak Ridge, Memphis, and Chattanooga.

http://www.seiu205.org/

[NMMNG]

15. We can't afford universal health care

Don't you know there are foreigners to kill? :sarcasm:

[Red Right and BLUE]

16. This DESPERATELY needs to be an election issue.

Other countries have great healthcare systems. We have lots of money, lots of blood on our hands, and people dying in waiting rooms.

[Ino]

17. Repugs don't care about this

They would like to kill us all off so the FatCats will own EVERYTHING. They'll take care of the doctors & pharmaceutical companies, and they'll be the only ones who can afford it. There's an unlimited supply of slave labor from Mexico and in India to do the grunt work.

[Vinca]

19. There was a piece on the editorial page of our local paper last week

by Paul Krugman (I think - just searched and can't find it) that started out with the story of a little kid with a serious medical problem and Blue Cross somehow managed to cancel the policy so the family is stuck with tens of thousands of dollars worth of bills. What good is insurance if they can weasel out of coverage anyway? My brother briefly worked at an HMO and his primary job was to deny coverage to people. It was the best paying job he ever had, but he just couldn't do it. Previous posters are right when they say universal health care needs to be a main focus of a political campaign.