It's long overdue that America hang its head in shame.
It's long overdue that the political class come to the American people pleading for forgiveness.
This morning in a massive and lengthy lead editorial, The New York Times actually uses the word shame (have they been reading the Daily Kos health catastrophe diaries?) to describe our merciless, depraved and cockroach infested healthcare system.
The American people have been all but abandoned. We are on our own. AHIP owns them the political class.
Our American house is on fire and I'm deeply frightened and demoralized.
I'm also not going out on a limb to say that what you're about to read involve gross and systemic human rights violations.
Yes, human rights violations.
Shame is a polite word. Why not write to the New York Times and tell them to call our system what it is, Murder by Spreadsheet?
Here's the email address for the Times: letters@nytimes.com
And here's a link to the page which gives you instructions about letter to the editor submissions. http://www.nytimes.com/...
World’s Best Medical Care?
Insurance coverage. All other major industrialized nations provide universal health coverage, and most of them have comprehensive benefit packages with no cost-sharing by the patients. The United States, to its shame, has some 45 million people without health insurance and many more millions who have poor coverage. Although the president has blithely said that these people can always get treatment in an emergency room, many studies have shown that people without insurance postpone treatment until a minor illness becomes worse, harming their own health and imposing greater costs.
I wonder what Jennifer Holiday has to say about Murder by Spreadsheet?
Jennifer is a citizen of the great state of Texas, she was attacked--blasted with a gun, her cousin killed. Jennifer had lost her job and her insurance. This is what happens in America. This is what happens to citizens of the richest country on the planet.
Well there are emergency rooms as Mr. Bush recently reminded us. All is good in the world.
Sit down, take a breath and wrap your mind around what American citizens endure.
Where are our leaders?
Jennifer Holliday is too wealthy to qualify for indigent medical care in Angelina County, but poor enough to qualify for limited care at the University of Texas Medical Branch.
So Holliday, her arm mangled by a shotgun blast from a man who attacked her, must make the three-hour, 175-mile drive from her Lufkin home to Galveston for physical therapy twice a week.
Holliday is among a growing number of Texans without health insurance and Medicaid who are streaming to metropolitan areas and state-funded hospitals such as UTMB to get care that is not available at home.
The single mother of a 7-year-old son still has shotgun pellets in her arm and needs surgery to restore the use of it. She lost her job and her health insurance after the 2005 attack, and now lives on $900 a month.
She and others turn to UTMB because most Texas counties do not provide care to anyone earning more than 21 percent of the federal poverty level, according to a January report by Morningside Research and Consulting Inc. of Austin, a consultant to county indigent-care programs.
Imagine this. Jennifer is not unique. This exact scenerio plays out day-after-day across the length and breadth of the United States.
About 70,000 poor and uninsured patients received medical care at UTMB last year, but more than 35,000 were turned away, said Dr. John Stobo, whose term as UTMB president ended last month.
The Legislature this year denied the hospital's request for about $50 million to meet the rising costs of care for those who can't pay, said Dr. Ben G. Raimer, UTMB vice president for county outreach.
Patients who can't pay are driving up insurance rates and taxes in a broken health care system, studies show.
Here's more about Jennifer. Please forgive me, I can't post any more of this tragic horror story here. It's too fucking brutal and cruel. Please go to the link and read it for yourself. And recogonize this is commonplace in the United States!
Before becoming one of the uninsured, Holliday earned $40,000 per year as a paramedic for a Lufkin ambulance service.
Her life changed the morning of May 29, 2005, as she and her 18-year-old cousin, Anna Franklin, drove along Texas 69 in Angelina County. Eric Stephen Parnell, of Pollok, a man she had never met, pulled up next to Holliday and fired a shotgun into her Ford Explorer.
One blast struck her cousin in the head, killing her. Another nearly blew off Holliday's arm. Parnell abducted and beat her. He received two consecutive life sentences. Holliday said she received rapid and efficient treatment under her employer's insurance policy, and then under Medicaid after the ambulance service went bankrupt, canceling her insurance.
Then a quirk in the law left her without any insurance at all. Her qualification for $900 monthly Social Security disability payments, her only income, made her ineligible for federal medical assistance for two years.
Holliday says she was treated differently once she lost her insurance. "Even the way you get looked at and treated, it's unbelievable," she said.
You weeping yet? You need more? Don't kid yourself, the tragedy of Jennifer is identical to the healthcare nightmares faced by millions of Americans.
Let's move on the the Massachusetts miracle mudhole.
You're going to be hearing lots of crap about all those lucky citizens in Massachusetts. Don't be deceived.
Here's an email I recently received from a Kossack living in Massachusetts.
You want to know the truth about the Massachusetts mandate, junk insurance read this.
I am living in Massachusetts which is now touted as having "universal healthcare". As far as I'm concerned it is primarily a way to send more money (both government funds and citizen money) to insurance companies. My husband has been out of work for 3 years, going on 4 years. He is 62.
The [name deleted by nyceve] where I work does not cover family members (well, you can pay full price to get on the plan - it would have cost me $700 per month to cover my husband). As an aside, some male staff members have coverage for their families, including the executive director who makes $200K per year. When I raised the question of the inequity I was told that the exceptions were the result of "salary and negotiations". I didn't fall into that fortunate category. So my salary which is barely paying our mortgage, taxes, heat, water, etc. now has to stretch to buy mandatory insurance for my husband (the cheapest plan offered for him is over $300 a month with a $2000 deductible so even if we had the insurance we would not be able to afford to use it; and the plans for older folks are more expensive).
Of course, my problem is that I make too much to fall into the assistance category (I think if we were a family making less than $40K we might qualify, and the gov't has mandated that those plans cannot have a deductible). So we haven't signed up for insurance. I don't have an extra $300 per month. In fact in the last 5 years I have had 2 raises of 3% each. Doesn't cover the other increases (our municipal taxes have pretty much doubled in that period, plus transportation, etc.)
So this year I will lose my state deductible. Starting in January 2008 they will be penalizing me to the tune of half of whatever the cheapest plan is (i.e., $150) per month. Can they get blood out of a stone? I guess I'll find out. (I'm trying to figure out if we would be better off divorced? At least he might qualify for assistance.) The insurance companies are laughing all the way to the bank. What other ways can legislators find to pay back their good corporate friends? Still, a neighbor of mine and myself arranged to meet with our state rep a few months ago, and he said that we were the only constituents that he had heard from. What the f....?!!!
And this just adds to the stress of living with a 62-year-old husband who may get catastrophically sick tomorrow. The system is heartless, without conscience. And as an ex-patriate Canadian, I do not understand why people are not in the street protesting. (Of course, at this point there are so many things to protest, who can figure out where to start?)
I've lived here for 20 years and have never understood it. And when I mentioned to my state rep that over 30% of every U.S. healthcare dollar goes to overhead, compared with 17% in Canada, he pointed out to me that for Medicare it's only 4%. That is just sad. I've never understood the concept of privatization either. Oh, wait a minute, if you have a completely corrupt and inept government, maybe it does make sense? But no, they just outsource everything to their equally corrupt and inept corporate backers.
Want more? Had enough?
This is how we treat our elderly in the United States of America, the richest country on the planet.
At age 59, a time she would rather have been planning her retirement, Brenda Broadbent filed for bankruptcy.
Uninsured and buried by nearly $100,000 in medical bills, she lost her house, her car and any sense of control.
"It was a very dark time in my life," said Broadbent, whose Christmastime 2003 heart attack sent her into a financial tailspin that dashed any thoughts of retiring.
"I'll be working probably until they put me in a pine box," she added.
. . ."Life was great," said Broadbent, who added that she had been healthy for years. "I had tripleA credit. I wasn't behind on anything -- nothing. I had, I thought, my life in order. Then all of a sudden, bam! It went down the tubes."
Quadruple bypass surgery followed the heart attack. After she was discharged, medicines cost her $900 a week. The hospital bill was $80,000, with another $10,000 in charges from doctors.
Unable to work, Broadbent could not satisfy the mortgage, car and utility bills, or the thousands of dollars in charges for house repairs and new furnishings. Impaired by post-surgery memory loss, she could not return to handling real estate transactions, settling for taking part-time work instead.
"My phone rang every six minutes, from 8 in the morning until 9 at night," Broadbent said of the calls from creditors. ""I knew I had to do something."
Our American house is on fire. I am very frightened and sad. This is not the country I grew up in, I don't recognize this place any longer.
Crossposted at Daily Kos
__________________________
