Killing People for Fun and Profit

Stephanie Woolhandler, M.D. of Harvard Medical School testified before the President’s Council on Bioethics this past week about her experiences with [non]health care in Amerika. The council was created in 2001 to ‘advise’ the president on bioethical issues arising from advances in biomedical science and technology. 

Single-payer, “Medicare for All” type reform is drastically needed as the US falls farther and farther away from the so-called ‘Modern World’ in terms of the general health, life expectancy, infant and maternal mortality rates, and the sheer number of hard-working citizens who will die without any medical care at all because they simply have no access and cannot afford it.

“I’ve seen people die because of co-payments and deductibles.”

There are an estimated 47 million Americans with no insurance. And as more and more of them are losing their jobs and their homes as the economy descends into depression, that number will rise dramatically. An estimated 18,000 Americans Die every year because they have no health insurance or money to pay thousands of dollars’ worth of deductibles and co-pays for the junk insurance they do have. Fully one half of personal bankruptcies in this country are the result of getting sick or injured. 76% of those filers HAD insurance when they got sick or injured, but the deductibles and co-pays bankrupted them anyway.

America doesn’t need health insurance. It doesn’t need more junk health insurance. It doesn’t need to force businesses to be non-competitive in the world markets because they have to provide health care (via insurance) to those lucky enough to have jobs that offer it…

What America needs is health care.

Tomorrow – July 30 – is the 40th anniversary of Medicare. As an action item, LtEs and letters of complaint/support can be sent to the NY Times in response to Blumenthal’s opinion piece, to AHIP the insurance industry lobby, and/or to The President’s Council on Bioethics.

American citizens are dying right now for lack of health care, at the rate of at least 50 per day. Is killing men, women and children in Iraq MORE important than treating people right here at home?

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Filed under Activism, Class War, Eugenics, For-Profit Insurance, Health Care, Universal Care | Comment (0)