More Americans Are Dying Due To Lack of Insurance than Any Enemy Attack Ever Caused

[berni_mccoy]

I started doing research on how many Americans were dying due to lack of healthcare, brought on by lack of insurance. In 2002, seven years ago, 18,000 Americans were dying each year due to lack of insurance (http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/healthcare/2002-05-22-insurance-deaths.htm).

The problem is much worse today, though I cannot find a more recent study.

Assuming this is constant (and we know it's increasing), that's roughly 126 thousand Americans who died from lack of insurance since 2002. In that same time period, the government has increased spending by over 350 billion dollars per year. If that money had gone to saving American lives of the people dying from lack of healthcare instead of fighting illegal wars in Iraq, tens of thousands more Americans would be alive today.

It really is that simple.

If Congress is truly interested in the defense and security of American people, then Congress needs to dramatically cut military spending and put forth a dramatic public option that will allow all Americans to be able to go to the doctor.

[spartan61]

1. Would you mind if I sent this to my congress critters?

They really need to know this and I'm sure they haven't bothered to research it. Thanks for this post. It really is eye opening.

[ejpoeta]

2. but then the unwashed masses might be sitting in the same waiting room at

my doctor's office and i may have to wait to be seen. and we can't have that!! :sarcasm:

[dkf]

3. Why is the problem lack of insurance and not the high costs of health care period?

If health care wasn't so damned expensive, all we'd need is a catastrophic policy.

I want to know why all the other countries spend less with better results before I throw more money at the problem.

[berni_mccoy]

6. Healthcare costs so much simply because of the Insurance companies. They take money from patients..

AND doctors.

They get premiums and force patients to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket before they pay a dime.

They get malpractice insurance from Doctors who may never need it. And malpractice insurance are one of the largest expenses for doctor's and healthcare facilities. If a doctor *ever* has a problem, litigated or not, they will likely not be able to afford the increase in premium from a single incident. It's much like having your rates increased after a fender-bender or a traffic ticket. Hospitals have staff dedicated to tracking incidents as required by malpractice insurance policies. The Hospitals are required to pay for their premiums and the overhead the premiums cause.

Furthermore, hospitals and medical facilities spend a large portion of their budget filing unnecessary paper work going back-and-forth with insurance companies on claims and trying to get patients to pay instead.

[dkf]

9. And getting everyone to buy health insurance will solve our problems?

Sounds like it will make it worse, no?

Doctors and hospitals need another model of health care. We should be able to make monthly payments directly to a group that will take care of our medical needs.

[berni_mccoy]

10. Having a public option will mitigate it. A single-payer system will solve it.

[left is right]

12. I have insurance

give me government covered health care. I had my gall bladder out last year and owe a couple of thousand dollars for my portion of the bills. I am diabetic and the only medicine that works in keeping my blood sugars under 150 cost me $49/month after the insurance copay

[dkf]

14. Government should put $1 billion dollars to cure diabetes.

That would save waaaaaay more.

Also more $ into stem cell research.

[notesdev]

16. That's what insurance should be about

Insurance should be for catastrophic situations only. The very definition of insurance is to hedge against a risk - not to deal with a certainty.

When most people say "health insurance" they are really talking about a "health maintenance plan".

And these health maintenance plans are a crock and a scam - if not for the costs imposed by the plans themselves, there would be no need for such plans.

[nashville_brook]

4. workplace brown-nosing has likewise skyrocketed, which might explain why a new study hasn't emerged.

can't offend the PTB and risk becoming one of these statistics.

[AlphaCentauri]

5. I would say not the lack of insurance but the lack of our government to take care of

it's constituents

[BanzaiBonnie]

7. I love this idea

"If Congress is truly interested in the defense and security of American people, then Congress needs to dramatically cut military spending and put forth a dramatic public option that will allow all Americans to be able to go to the doctor."


I'm going to use that sentiment in some of my LTTE.

[OmahaBlueDog]

8. I remember writing an LTTE of my local paper in 2004 citing that 2002 figure

I pointed out that, while 9-11 was awful and we had every right to be angry, the equivalent of seven 9-11s were taking place every year, and where was the outrage?

Unfortunately, John Kerry was defeated, and the problem has gotten worse.

To me, there are three takeaways that every American should have on this issue:

1) the figures you cite show that many more Americans die every year from lack of healthcare than died on Pearl Harbor, 9-11, and Gulf War II combined

2) In 2008, the United States will spend 17 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care. It is projected that the percentage will reach 20 percent by 2017. Health care spending accounted for 10.9 percent of the GDP in Switzerland, 10.7 percent in Germany, 9.7 percent in Canada and 9.5 percent in France, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Bottom line: this is a serious drag on our economy.

http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml

3) You'll hear horror stories about government healthcare in Canada. For every one of those stories, you can easily find a story here about families denied care by an HMO, families unable to get care for lack of insurance, or families bankrupted by healthcare issues.

[area51]

11. How 'bout this study?

100,000 dying per year in the U.S. due to lack of healthcare.

Physicians for a National Health Plan have an answer.

[inna]

25. thanks for the links

a couple of tidbits...

The most credible estimate of the number of people in the United States who have died because of lack of medical care was provided by a study carried out by Professors David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler (New England Journal of Medicine 336, no. 11 <1997>). They concluded that almost 100,000 people died in the United States each year because of lack of needed care—three times the number of people who died of AIDs. It is important to note here that while the media express concern about AIDs, they remain almost silent on the topic of deaths due to lack of medical care. Any decent person should be outraged by this situation. How can we call the United States a civilized nation when it denies the basic human right of access to medical care in time of need? No other major capitalist country faces such a horrendous situation.

But the problem does not end here, with the uninsured. An even larger problem is the underinsured, that is, people whose health benefits coverage is inadequate. Most people find, at a crucial moment in their lives when they really need care, that their health insurance coverage does not include the type of medical problem they have, the type of intervention they need, or the type of tests or pharmaceuticals they require—or, that it covers only a minute portion of what must be paid for the services. We, as Americans, are the citizens with the least amount of health benefits coverage in the western world. Even the federal programs, such as Medicare (which in theory should cover all care for the elderly), are very insufficient.

On Rationing...

Won’t this result in rationing like in Canada?

The U.S. already rations care. Rationing in U.S. health care is based on income: if you can afford care, you get it; if you can’t, you don’t. A recent study by the prestigious Institute of Medicine found that 18,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have health insurance. Many more skip treatments that their insurance company refuses to cover. That’s rationing. Other countries do not ration in this way.

If there is this much rationing, why don’t we hear about it? And if other countries ration less, why do we hear about them? The answer is that their systems are publicly accountable, and ours is not. Problems with their health care systems are aired in public; ours are not. For example, in Canada, when waits for care emerged in the 1990s, Parliament hotly debated the causes and solutions. Most provinces have also established formal reporting systems on waiting lists, with wait times for each hospital posted on the Internet. This public attention has led to recent falls in waits there.

In U.S. health care, no one is ultimately accountable for how the system works. No one takes full responsibility. Rationing in our system is carried out covertly through financial pressure, forcing millions of individuals to forego care or to be shunted away by caregivers from services they can’t pay for.

The rationing that takes place in U.S. health care is unnecessary. A number of studies (notably a General Accounting Office report in 1991 and a Congressional Budget Office report in 1993) show that there is more than enough money in our health care system to serve everyone if it were spent wisely. Administrative costs are at 31% of U.S. health spending, far higher than in other countries’ systems. These inflated costs are due to our failure to have a publicly financed, universal health care system. We spend about twice as much per person as Canada or most European nations, and still deny health care to many in need. A national health program could save enough on administration to assure access to care for all Americans, without rationing.

[Luminous Animal]

13. The Death Clock

http://hc-dw.org/

[old mark]

15. Our real enemies: The GOP, the insurance business, the AMA-

and the DINOs in Congress.
We need to get really progressive on these bastards.


mark

[Cleita]

17. It should be rephrased as lack of health care. Lots of people have insurance

but no health care. There was a woman on Thom Hartmann yesterday who said she paid $600 a month for health insurance and she had to sign a waiver for a condition that she really needs health care for. She also has a five thousand dollar deductible that she never reaches. Since she has to pay for her insurance and health care, she doesn't have the money to get routine screening tests like mammograms. She has insurance but could die for lack of health care. I had a similar situation before I became old enough for Medicare and do get real health insurance and health care now. I wish people understood that this is what we need to push for, Medicare for all.

[berni_mccoy]

18. Good point, but it's too late to change the title. The point is in the post though.

[truedelphi]

19. Yes they are dying. Sad to say, we die when we don't have insurance,

We die when we do.

I am convinced that in May 2005 I woul d have hemorrhaged to death if not for the fact that I was recently covered by insurance. Oh yeah, the local hospital is forced by law to see me - but that doesn't mean they have to really help. They can pretend to not notice a problem and just send you home.

But the HMO that did save my life then almost cost my husband his life a few months later. They "Forgot" to check him for diabetes - he thus spent six unnecessary weeks with high blood sugar.

[earth mom]

20. Wake up America! There's only enough money in the g'ment coffers to KILL PEOPLE.

:argh:

[NorthCarolina]

21. There's hope...soon they will have a Government Mandated Insurance Policy

:sarcasm:

[Juche]

22. Yeah, it sucks

Worst case scenario: we will be forced to buy inefficient private insurance that will still take our money and use it to hire people whose only job is to deny us coverage after we get sick, and still have to use it on a bloated healthcare system that wastes 30% of all healthcare dollars.

[Turbineguy]

23. But at least they have

the freedom to choose to get sick.

I mean, who doesn't want to live in a republican paradise?


:sarcasm:

[Bonobo]

24. k&r