Quarter-Million Dead and Not Counting

[Bluebear]

by Donna Smith

After this past weekend of horrific storms and tornadoes, it was clearly appropriate for our elected officials to declare a federal disaster in some areas. With the designation comes some federal money and help for the storm-ravaged areas and residents. Few would quarrel with our government stepping up and stepping in when so many lives and so many livelihoods have been damaged and lost. It is the right thing to do, and some suffering will be mitigated.

Over the past four years since the making of SiCKO, Michael Moore's 2007 documentary, an estimated 45,000 people each and every year have died simply because they lacked access to healthcare. The US healthcare dead are dead not because the care wasn't available - it just wasn't available to them. They did not have the financial means (either the cash, credit or correct insurance coverage) to demonstrate to a healthcare provider or doctor that they should be treated and that their lives should be saved.

That's tipping toward the quarter-million dead mark soon enough. The US healthcare dead could fill Trenton, NJ, or the Palm Springs area of California, or Daytona Beach, FL, or Canton, OH, or Boise City, ID, Rockford, IL, or Ann Arbor, MI - to name just a few of the cities with populations roughly equivalent to those killed by greed not disease or injury just since 2006 and 2007 when SiCKO was being produced and when it was released....

At least if we're not going to declare this an emergency, I wish we'd at least report it as significant. 123 dead for lack of healthcare access a day in the United States in 2011. 2,739 bankrupt due to medical crisis every day in the United States in 2011. The numbers don't lie. We do. We lie to each other when we ignore the shared reality of the torture and pain behind those numbers. And to hear assaults on Medicare and Medicaid and any other programs that might reduce even a bit the rising tide of pain is an affront to any sense of common decency any of us might have imagined was present in our society.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/donna-smith/35696/quarter-million-dead-and-not-counting

[readmoreoften]

1. Thank you.

[Snoutport]

2. Highly recommended , thank you for sharing this.

[fascisthunter]

3. Saving a life shouldn't have a Price

if you saw somebody drowning in a pool, would you deny that person the help because they couldn't pay you? Call them Wealth Insurance, because that's what they really are doing.

[GeorgeGist]

4. But we got drones to buy ...

so we can kill terrorist babies.

[hfojvt]

5. 2,739 bankruptcies per day is amazing, same with the deaths

45,000 deaths a year is about the same as the number of automobile deaths per year. The thing is that I have known several people personally who have died in car accidents. Mostly young people too. A high school junior, a college freshman, both classmates of mine, another college freshman who was a student of mine, a mother from my church, and a number of pedestrians hit by cars, another classmate in a motorcycle accident. There's seven off the top of my head. Yet I cannot think of either anybody that I know who has died from lack of health care or who has gone bankrupt because of medical expenses. Not one in my 49 years of life.

How is that possible if there are 20 times as many bankruptcies as auto accident deaths?

[zazen]

8. people hide it--it's shameful

If you publicize your poverty and ill health, it makes it harder to ever get employment again. People shun you. I know.

[hfojvt]

13. sickness cannot really be hidden

I have known a number of people who have had cancer and a number of people who have died of cancer. When people that live around you get sick, you generally hear about it, and I don't see how a person can go bankrupt and have it not make a major impact. And you'd think the dying people would have loved ones who would be raising holy hell. It shouldn't be nameless numbers posted on a message board, it should be friends and relatives of people you know, of people I know. Is it? Because for me it isn't.

[Mimosa]

27. You are correct.

My partner and I hide our situation for that exact reason.

[reggie the dog]

15. do you live in and work in a poor area, a wealthy area or a middle class

area? do you have friends or family living in housing projects or trailer parks?

[inna]

29. out of touch

hardly surprising

[OhioChick]

6. Thanks for posting n/t

[tnlefty]

7. Don't even mention the dead or the bankrupted from what

the blood sucking insurance companies decide they don't want to pay for.

BCBS almost bankrupted us when I was ill years ago. I don't go to Dr.s anymore, not for pap smears, breast checks, nothing. Preventative care is covered for my spouse, the insured at his place of employment, the kids and I have no coverage for annual physicals. When the kids were young, the baby visits weren't covered...the checkups, vaccinations, nothing, and we have a supposedly great union health insurance plan, that we could be taxed for.

I despise the blood sucking 'insurance' industry, just to be perfectly clear.

[eridani]

9. Medical bankruptcies INCREASED in MA after their "reform" n/t

[bobbolink]

10. I wish they could come up with figures for how many become homeless from medical bankruptcies.

All people want to talk about is how people are homeless because of "mental illness" and/or substance abuse.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were more homeless people from medical bankruptcies.

[reggie the dog]

16. is that how you became homeless?

the usa is so inhumaine, in most if not all E U nations people get CARED FOR BY SOCIETY when they get a bad illness or have a bad accident because "it could happen to anybody" and we all hope that when it happens we can help make the people well again because one day it just may be us or a loved one in that situation. Why is this so hard for so many people in the usa to understand?

[Amonester]

20. It is so hard because the Rich tell their well-paid propagandists to propagandize

helping those who need help is scary, scary, scary SOCIALISM.

And it works (for them). Imagine that.

[bobbolink]

24. Please do NOT ask strangers on a public and anonymous board for personal information.

That is NOT kosher. Many of us have been stalked and attacked, and do NOT need to give our own personal data for someone else to take advantage of. I am smart enough to not answer your question, but please do NOT ask that of anyone else. It puts people at a disadvantage, and that is WRONG.

The rest of what you say I agree with. But this is NOT something that the Dems or liberals or "progressives" care about... it is not on their priority lists.

[reggie the dog]

26. sorry, i often give up a shitload of info on here but i can respect that

others want to keep more hidden, i was just wondering if you were homeless because of medical bills and didnt want to know your name, where you live, nothing. i was just trying to understand why people become homeless and you have stated on here more than once that you are indeed homeless so i was just curious if it was due to layoffs, medical costs, perhaps leaving an abusive spouse. To someone who is ignorant on the subject how could someone take advantage of knowing why you became homeless if you already tell people on here you are homeless? Anyways i didnt mean anything by it. How can people find out who you are throught your pseudoname?

[leftstreet]

25. The funny thing is, there's no such thing as "medical bankruptcy"

Bankruptcy is bankruptcy, a person can file specific types and reaffirm a creditor s/he plans to pay but that's about it.

It's a strange, new term and makes as much sense as saying "cable tv bill bankruptcy" or "car payment bankruptcy."

Hmm

[Mimosa]

28. It makes a lot of sense

But you don't understand it.

[slipslidingaway]

11. knr nt

[inna]

12. WTF is wrong with this country! (not a question. purely rhetorical.)

How do people put up with this crap, literally THE only country in the civilized world??!!

This makes me want to fucking SCREAM, bang my head on the wall, whatever.

Why are the American people (as a generalisation, of course) so susceptible to the most brazen and obvious propaganda? It's really beyond Orwell at this point.


(As a side point, The Evil, Evil Gaddafi, Public Enemy #1, provides free healthcare/education/all kinds of social welfare for all Libyans and deserves credit for transforming Lybia from THE poorest nation in the world to the country with THE highest living standards (and the most egalitarian one) in entire Africa (according to the most recent data, including the 2010 UN Human Development Index – which is a composite measure of health, education and income). Oh well. Looks like it's all history at this point, now that Libyans are nearly "liberated". :nuke: What a fucking farce.)

[reggie the dog]

17. Libya is on the left in sprit i imagnie

and any right wing government getting to power would be kept in place by you know who....

as far as your question, one word is all we need to understand what is wrong, i am an athiest but i know it is a deadly sin for christians, GREED!

[crickets]

14. K&R

[Kurovski]

18. K&R(nt)

[me b zola]

19. K&R

[Turbineguy]

21. It's a sad comment

on how well the republican plan is working.

[bluethruandthru]

22. [phone] n/t

[MissDeeds]

23. K&R

:kick: