A September 2009 Harvard study found that more than 45,000 deaths occur annually in the U. S. due to Americans lacking adequate health insurance. This number alone means one death every 12 minutes. More broadly, the total number of people who die in the United States because of the lack of medical care, whether insured or uninsured, was calculated in a 1997 study to be 100,000 per year, as published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Multiply this figure over four years and it alone equals the number of U. S. military casualties suffered during World War II. The difference now however is this number of deaths grows and continues year after year.
Even more significantly, the U. S. investor-owned medical system itself, which includes the insurance industry, has played a larger role in the deaths of Americans. The Journal of the American Medical Association reported in July 2000, “…a total of 225,000 Americans die each year…” as a result of the assembly line, under-staffed, commodity-based, profit-motivated medical treatment they receive. The report states that these deaths result from unnecessary surgery, medication errors and other avoidable errors in hospitals, infections in hospitals and the negative effects of prescribed drugs.
The report concluded that America’s healthcare system itself is the third leading cause of death in the U. S., after heart disease and cancer. The situation since the report has only gotten more horrifying. And given the “healthcare reform,” legislation close to passage in Washington D. C. the situation is guaranteed to get much worse! The legislation is designed solely to cut the costs of the healthcare system for business and guarantee billions in profit for the privately owned healthcare industry. It will not guarantee access to quality care for everyone.
The capitalist class, through its investor-owned insurance industry, is being guaranteed tens of millions of new customers under the proposed legislation. Many Americans currently uninsured will be required to buy health insurance (or they will be fined), with some getting taxpayer subsidies and others not. However, this is hundreds of billions of dollars per year in new found cash! And it will be going into the coffers of the health insurance industry and for-profit healthcare providers. This is not healthcare. This is capitalist-care!
Our elected leaders must be held accountable to meet the basic human needs of the people they govern. The highest quality healthcare for all Americans is such a human need and as such is a birthright. Either those who are elected to represent the American people provide it, or they are no longer fit to govern and must be removed as obstacles in the way of human progress. It’s that simple.
Nationalization of the entire healthcare industry, under the control of a government genuinely organized in the interests of the people, can guarantee that all of the healthcare needs of the American people are met. The unfettered, constantly improving scientific advancements of quality care can then be unleashed and utilized to provide true healthcare for the American people.
To realize this kind of future from the present requires the growing unification of those healthcare champions and soldiers who by virtue of their mission are already historically moving towards a “healthcare first” nationalization of the U. S. healthcare industry. These groups and individuals are to be found amongst those who are currently engaged in the struggle for a universal, single-payer, governmental system of delivery that eliminates the insurance industry gatekeepers and middlemen.
The first segment of an old proverb rings true for the American people today, “…the people without a vision shall perish…” However, a vision without organization, a strategy and a plan to achieve it always rings hollow. Let’s take the next steps to build a future that belongs to us!
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