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US Healthcare History: Our Very Own Killing Fields
Jenny Fritts was 24 years old. Jenny lived with her husband Sean for the past five years, and together they had a little girl named Kylee, 2. Jenny was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child - a beautiful, baby girl.
Jenny is dead. Jenny's unborn baby is dead. They died because they were turned away for appropriate care at a for-profit hospital because they did not have health insurance. Sean rushed Jenny back to another hospital when her symptoms became even more severe, and he lied about having insurance to get her in the door. She was placed on a respirator in intensive care, but she didn't make it. She died. And so did her baby.
They become two more of the more than 45,000 Americans who die preventable deaths due to our broken healthcare system every year. Two more. Mother and child.
And the tragedy doesn't end there. Sean has been very depressed since he lost Jenny and their baby. The rest of his family and friends are worried about him. But he cannot get treatment either. He doesn't have insurance. (You can watch their story here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td802aj-7Sc) Imagine how you might feel. Imagine.
These are our killing fields. In America. In October 2009. In Barack Obama's America. That land full of hope and promise for those who can afford that hope and promise. Yet few in our government offices react as one might think you would when hearing of Jenny and the baby and Sean and Kylee.
I read these stories every day on the guaranteedhealthcare.org website. I read them and clean up a spelling glitch or two and then post them for the world to see. The website belongs to the nurses of the California Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee. Patients send their stories to the nurses in cascading waves of anger and frustration and desperation. They want someone to listen and to give a damn. And they want someone to help.
But there are so many. The nurses advocate for their own patients whenever they can. And when it's possible, nurses take to the streets and to the phone to try to protest. But the numbers swell every day.
Many are like Jenny and Sean and have no insurance at all or have lost their insurance when they lost jobs or because an employer cannot afford to offer it.
Some are insured and fighting insurance companies for care that their doctors have ordered.
Rich Zandlo, 38, suffers from Cystic Fibrosis and is currently surviving off just 19 percent of his lungs. Rich, who lives in Phoenix, needs a lung transplant at UCLA, but his insurer will not cover the transplant if it is done out of state.
His family is looking for help raising money to get him temporary housing and care in California so he can be available to be on the operating table when the call comes. Find out more, and what you can do to help, at their website, www.helprichzandlo.com.
Amanda (Tannery) Field, 30, has thrombocytosis and doctors are also working her up for Budd Chiari syndrome which is preventing the liver from draining properly. Simply put, her liver is dying. Amanda and her husband both work full time, and she has a 13 year old son to support. Due to the illness, she has been unable to work recently, due to the hospital stays. Aetna, her insurer, has denied help due to a lapse in coverage while she was unemployed.
Amanda's family also has a website, http://www.giveforward.org/amandafield/ where they are trying to raise the quarter million dollars necessary for a liver transplant. They have raised only 7 percent of the funds needed to be evaluated for a transplant. Doctors are currently working on a variety of interim measures to keep her alive.
So, what is our Congress waiting for? And our President? Have they so detached themselves from Sean's reality, from Rich's struggle for air and from Amanda's failing health that they think this debate is about excise taxes and re-election prospects?
This is no political contest. This is very real life and death. Mothers and babies. Young and old. The profit-takers know no boundaries for their greed, and our killing fields are filling with the innocents.
We apparently do not understand that this is no different than an external enemy attacking our citizens and killing 120 of them every single day. What would we be doing? Would we repel that aggressor? Would we protect civilian lives? I don't know that answer to that as we apparently think it acceptable to allow Jenny and her baby to die. And they were just two that day - 118 others died too just on that day alone.
The media should cover Jenny's death and her baby's death with as much intensity as any boy in a balloon drifting over the Rockies. When we are forced to confront what we are allowing to happen in homes and clinics and hospitals all across this land, we will perhaps find it less easy to dismiss as anomaly.
Healthcare is a basic human right. Whatever stops the human rights transgressions against our citizens - our Jenny's and our babies -- that allow this should be halted immediately and by force, if necessary, and then fixed properly so that all citizens of these great United States have equal protection under the law of their human right to healthcare. Immediately extending care through a Medicare for All like effort would be a less drastic but equally effective fix. A non-profit, single standard of high quality healthcare for all. Jenny would be alive today and so would her baby daughter.
Our government should grant, provide and protect the right to healthcare as if it meant the future of our nation or its failure. Because that is exactly what it does mean.
115 Comments so far
Show AllUnfortunately CRIME pays handsomely to the criminals who prey on humanity. However humans pay with their lives.
The Devil blesses America, and rules.
You have a nice day now.
United Satanic States of America. If there is a God, may he have mercy on our souls.
I shake my head and ask: Just what kind of nation are we living in?
Are the people who say we live in the "greatest country" see the reality of the pain, despair and fear around them--or is the vast majority only going to wake up on the day they themselves lose their jobs, have no insurance or find their insurance doesn't cover the treatment they need?
Sometime I wonder if the majority Americans are living unhinged from reality.
This is the truth.
Even Jesus Christ called him the Prince of the Earth. You know, as hard as it is to fathom, there are certain Jewish sects that actually believe that if you max out on human cruelty, you hasten the coming of the Messiah because He is supposed to come when evil has totally flowered. In this perverse logic, doing evil is doing God's work because it hastens the coming of Messiah. There are some very insane people in this world. They can justify ANYTHING to justify their greed and inhumanity.
Excellent article. As Ms. Smith points out, "Healthcare is a basic human right." Most European nations, as well as countries like Japan, Taiwan and even Cuba, believe that statement to be true. As T.R. Reid notes in his most relevant book The Healing of America: A Global Quest For Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care, "All the developed countries except the United States have decided that every human has a basic right to health care."
I would appear that the United States believes that its main duty is to slaughter people of color in foreign lands while apparently believing that every American should fear that they will die because of inadequate health care or that they will become bankrupt because they cannot pay their medical bills. No other industrialized country in the world can make those claims. American exceptionalism at its finest [or worst].
What amazes me the most is that the survivors of these (I want to write tragedies, but it's the wrong word) legal murders don't 'go postal' and shoot up the hospitals or the corporate hq's of the health insurance companies. Obviously these victims of the corporation's greed are better people than those who run and work on the behalf of the corporation. That is to be expected, as corporations are persons without souls, or perhaps the corporation's just haven't killed the 'right' person yet.
The mind boggles that the citizens of the usa would tolerate this...
"What amazes me the most is that the survivors of these (I want to write tragedies, but it's the wrong word) legal murders don't 'go postal' and shoot up the hospitals or the corporate hq's of the health insurance companies."
I have often wondered that myself. I think it is inevitable that it will happen. Has more and more people loose their health insurance and find themselves in these desperate situations at some point it's is going to happen to someone who will have no problem taking the law into his own hands. I think it's simply just a statistical inevitability. With all the guns and rage in this country I am really surprised that it has not happened already.
I think in order to go "postal", a certain level of moral depravity and spiritual bankruptcy needs to occur that just doesn't normally happen at the individual level. You might get a few cases but I doubt it becomes pandemic. Man is a pack animal in this respect. Pool them together and cruelty and atrocities undreamed of can become reality. I saw it on the playground in the first grade, I see it today in the Pentagon.
[I think in order to go "postal", a certain level of moral depravity and spiritual bankruptcy needs to occur]
Not really, think of the other sorts of 'crimes of passion', usually they happen when you come home and find your partner in bed with another person, or it's if you catch a thief in your home, or a person who's just attacked your child. How is it that when those same sorts of acts occur at a hospital, or because of an insurance company, the victim of the legal murder either accepts it and moves on, or, as GW North pointed out, commits a murder/suicide involving only their own family?
D'ya remember that movie about the white guy who went on a killing rampage a few years ago, can't remember the name, but in it the guy who went nuts attacked those who were not responsible for his situation. And it also happens in the school shootings, the killers are said to have been the victims of bullies, and yet it's not the bullies that the killers end up shooting is it? On the national level, the terrorists who attacked New York came from Saudi Arabia (mostly, unless you believe the other theories), yet the country that funded the extremist rhetoric, whose royal family has close ties with the bin Ladins, is not the country that you decide to invade.
Resorting to acts of violence won't really solve the main problem, which for this article is the lack of health care. The target to really shoot for doesn't involve the use of a gun, it requires the use of legislation that ends the profiteering on human health. Yet on the national level, your government still displays the inability to hit that target.
[People, individually or collectively, and quite reasonably, only have so much patience and are willing to suffer so much abuse.]
Given the last thirty years or so, I'd have to say the ability to suffer abuse is damn near infinite in the usa. (grin)
"Not really, think of the other sorts of 'crimes of passion', usually they happen when you come home and find your partner in bed with another person, or it's if you catch a thief in your home, or a person who's just attacked your child."
I agree that crimes of passion do indeed happen. I don't think they apply to the whole hospital experience. If you have ever tried to navigate the medical system with an ill family member, there is a lot of obfuscation, pain and confusion. Getting screwed over is a fine art form practiced by modern medicine. By the time you realize you have been screwed, you are sitting at home crying over your beer. This can't be compared to walking in on your spouse.
I agree that violence is not the answer. I often think of peaceful civil disobedience. The reality is, the death of humans doesn't really cost these corporations anything. The only thing that would make them pause is damage to their bottom line.
Sorry Lefty, I've only had to use the Canadian system when needing health care. No forms, no cheques to write, just visiting the sick rellie after his heart attack and commiserate about the poor quality of hospital cooking. I did read the stories referred to by D. Smith, and can't believe that some idiots here in Canada want to have your system.
You're quite right that the corporations involved (any corporation really) have a far greater fear of damage to their bottom line than they do of human suffering or death. Indeed when they can make a profit from suffering or death they are quite happy about it...
The $24 million dollar a year insurance CEO's are too well protected. It is impossible to get at them. That doesn't mean someone won't try. You are correct regarding the guns, rage and the fact it hasn't happened yet.
Terrorists get missiles, automatic weapons, remote control missiles, etc. Why can't an American? Any CEOs house can be found on line. Any insurance company stockholders' meeting can be located. This is do-able. And may be the only answer. If I had just watched my wife and unborn child die due to this kind of circumstance ... I would consider it. I would consider it carefully.
MichaelC
[Terrorists get missiles,]
When a national government wants them to get them. Otherwise, they have to steal from national armouries, and that's not usually something a terrorist group can get away with.
{ automatic weapons, etc. Why can't an American?]
Go to a gun show, buy a semi-auto and use your metal working skills to 'fix' the thing.
Unfortunately shooting the CEO won't solve the problem. It might get you the health care you need if you're locked up in jail, but I don't think that would really help you in the end.
A lot do go postal but turn on their own families instead. read on murder suicides and they tend to be in familes having "Financial difficulties".
I have noticed that many opponents of women's right to choose are vehemently opposed to single payer health care. Though the reasons for this deep philosophical marriage continues to elude me.
Do you think some of them will now step forward on behalf of yet one more "unborn child" -- this time a victim of, not an abortion or the Dr. Tillings of the world, but corporate health insurance greed?
Nope.
Course not, it's god's (tm) will that the woman and her 'unborn' child were 'called home'. Nothing to do with the greed of corporations from their pov.
Somehow they think that universal health care will end up paying for all abortions. In Canada, abortions are a private medical practice as those surgeries are considered to be 'elective'. If the woman would indeed die should the abortion not be performed than it's not an elective surgery.
Not true. Abortions are covered in BC under the BC system as long as you have lived in BC for three months.
I wont speak to other provinces But I am sure others are the same.
In Alberta you pay if it's at a clinic, I'm pretty sure the hospitals (in Edmonton anyhow) will only do an abortion if the mother's life is in danger.
I just looked up for alberta and they too have Hospitals where the procedure covered under the Health Plan. Like in BC only certain Hospitals will do this.
I am going to hazard a guess that since this falls under the Jurisdiction of the Federal Government, a provice can not ban or fail to pay for the procedure.
Must have changed since I last looked into it. They've changed the coverage for eye checkups, the last time I bought a new set of glasses I had to pay for the exam, something I never had to do before. The optometrist didn't like the fact that that service had been de-listed.
Smith: "The media should cover Jenny's death and her baby's death with as much intensity as any boy in a balloon drifting over the Rockies. "
But as Smith herself has noted, Jenny's death isn't news. It's business as usual.
On cbs news, the screams of that Florida boy who was doused with fuel and set on fire can now be heard on their website. It's horrifying to listen to. So, I noted in their comments section that dumping fuel on someone and lighting it is 'Napalm'. Bombs perform a similar function and a similar agony, but has ANYONE been treated to the screams of an Iraqi child? On cbs news website? And yet hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children have died in the last six years, most of them because America dumped fuel on them and lit it. Has anyone, ever heard their screams?
I'm deeply concerned that we live in a society that is selective about whose screams we're going to hear. Such a society cannot POSSIBLY have an accurate depiction of reality.
That pistol packin mama from Alaska was worried about Obomba's health care death panels. Well, we have death panels now; what the author calls " killing fields " but of course that was not important. Where is the outrage from the tea baggers and Palin when according to reliable sources, 122 people a day die because of lack of health care. IF THE HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE NOT DEATH PANELS, I DO NOT KNOW WHAT IS!
They just reformed our health insurance policy at work. Get this: I am to submit myself to the insurance company for tests that include things like glucose and cholesterol. If I don't, I will be "non-compliant" and my deductibles will be raised and my coverage decreased. Talk about inserting themselves between the patient and doctor. As I pointed out to my co-workers, they will then use this medical information in the future to deny me coverage based on "pre-existing" conditions. This whole situation is rotten to the core and every talking point these fascists make is in direct opposition to reality and truth. Unbelievable.
Yeah Lefty, the Health Insurance Companies are in business to make corrupt $$$ and they should change their name to: SICK INSURANCE COMPANIES. I do not have a problem with anyone making a legitmate profit, but these guys are making illegitmate profits and the first thing most of them do when you file a claim is either stall you and look for loopholes until they can figure a way to not pay or just deny you. I have seen this first hand in my family and friends.
Lefty,
One thing to watch for is that your diastolic blood pressure (the low number) is below 90. They have number crunched the blood pressure stats and have found that people with more than 90 are higher risk of heart disease and a host of other maladies. How true this is, I don't know. But I do know that you don't want to give them an excuse to jack up your rates because you are high risk. The best way to lower your diastolic blood pressure is to avoid salt for a week before the test, exercise aerobically every day and monitor your blood pressure until you get there. You can get an automatically inflating wrist cuff with digital meter pretty cheap. Do it and it will save you money on health insurance and probably lengthen your life.
in a time of increasing real scarcity, and false oil-based abundance, the winners win and watch as the losers are allowed to die..
--from the end of Conrad's Heart of Darkness: The horror!, the horror!
What is described in this article is completely immoral and sick. I wish we could also call it "Un-American", but obviously we can't.
Excellent article. Abortion is not a good thing as we look to women's health. It can have bad effects on their health. Try to avoid it as much as possible.
Thanks.
Canadian Pharmacy
We'd be able to provide the right kind of health care, a single-payer system, Medicare for All, if we weren't so completely obsessed with imperial military conquest of the entire world. Military spending is draining the treasury faster than any other budgetary expense, and this Congress is absolutely guilty of this obscene offense. So is Obama, as committed to militarism as any president in our sordid history. We simply cannot sustain a trillion dollar a year military budget and pay for universal health care at the same time. That's our priority: killing as many people and destroying as many cultures as we possibly can, all for totally bogus reasons--not providing decent health care for our own people.
But I agree with Ms. Smith that it is well past time that we take measures to FORCE these bastards to change their priorities, from militarisn to health care. We need to disempower the insurance cartel by taking our money back from their greedy clutches, any way at all. We need to start using physical force, because they simply do not repsond to anything else. Petitioning Congress to act like human beings instead of the monsters they clearly are has gotten us nowhere. We need to start dragginig them out of their power buildings into the streets, and giving them a taste of justice. We have let this obscenity drag on far too long. With 120+ dying every day because they can't afford health insurance makes us the most barbarian country in the world. Those assholes in Washington are the barbarians, and we need to take effective action to get rid of them. Begging and pleading with them is pointless. They listen to no one but zillionaire lobbyists. That's who they serve, not us. Why must we continue forever being enslaved to their monstrous greed and inhumanity?
While I agree that these foreign wars of imperialist aggression put a serious drain on our society, we could easily fund single payer with the existing pool of money we now use for health care. In fact, we would save billions of dollars each year. The insurance companies know that they are expensive middle men who do nothing for the health of Americans. This is why they vociferously attack any attempt at a public option. They know that millions of Americans like myself will dump them the day a public option becomes available. The laggards will continue to suffer at the hands of the insurance companies but when a superior government option stands out, they'll quickly jump ship.
No public option will be permitted by this Congress that in ANY way cuts into the profits of Big Insurance. Not. Gonna. Happen. Even if there is a public option in the final bill, it will be next to meaningless. The public option is just a way to distract from real reform, which is and can ony be a single-payer system. The public option they talk about is only for the very poorest people who can't possibly afford to buy insurance. It isn't meant to be optionable for everyone, because then of course nearly everyone would opt for it, and there's no way in hell they'll ever permit that. And it would only provide the barest bones coverage possible, if even that. The public option is a fig leaf. Big Insurance isn't worried by the threat of a public option. They own this whole fiasco of a system and neither Congress nor Obama is going to change that.
I am not ready to throw the towel in. I will talk with anyone who cares to listen. I have written my Congressman and both state Senators. I would gladly march in a protest if one presents itself. I think this is a crossroads for this country.
I haven't thrown in the towel, either, or I wouldn't bother making comments about this. Write, protest, march, talk calmly, see nothing change, move on.
Street protests never worked but hounding your Congressman and senators will. More people need to chip in like I do otherwise we're all losers.
The American people must accept their share of the blame for this tragedy. Most of us have become desensitized and lazy-minded, caring only about our own self-interest. We have allowed this situation to develop over the past decades, doing nothing to stop it. Anyone who dies, in this rich country, because they have no healthcare insurance, is a victim of first-degree murder, and anyone who sits back and doesn't protest this crime, is a willing party to it.
You make a very valid point, but you miss mentioning the most important members of the 'first degree murderers'---the Doctors.
The health care industry could not exist without the Doctors who are the 'first line of delivery'----and have allowed themselves, with very few exceptions to be 'the delivery boys and girls for a defective product' 'health care in the USA'.
Why you did not mention them is a very good example of the 'blind man' describing an Elephant while he holds the tail.
Exactly. In a comment above, I mentioned the 20% increase in my health care costs. To be more specific, the DOCTOR raised his charges 20% while the Insurance corporation did NOT raise their "allowed charges". Bastards, all.
Where is our health care Bulworth? lol It's been 11 years since this great movie, and the politicians are still running scared of the insurance industry.
Be sure to pass all the websites listed in this article around. I think it's high time to do a class action lawsuit by the citizens of our nation against the insurance companies for purposely conspiring with the government to halt progress in the medical field for the benefit of the citizens...
Nationalize insurance corporations, now. It's the only solution. Medicare for everyone, pre-natal to burial. We _can_ afford it.
Donna Smith wrote:....and then fixed properly so that all citizens of these great United States have...
If the United States (Its people) were so great why if this happening..?. Stop the demagoguery with such falsehood!
Not to make light of the tragedies reported here, but there is an irony: most people who "go postal" are on prescription pharmaceuticals. Something the MSM is loath to publicize. They got "health care." Just the wrong kind.
-30-
The antidepressant business may have just "put a cork" on the increasingly frustrated populace which was depressed for valid, not clinical, reasons. The shrinks, of course, were backing up the pharmaceuticals soma pushers. Now it may be reasonable to believe that, when people can no longer afford the menal "cork", an epidemic of "going postal" behavior may result. It's logical but they won't touch this one with research or studies because of "liability issues". The medical profession uses the legal profession with the insurance corporations to avoid responsibility for their behavior. And then they have the gall to talk about "responsible behavior". What a pack of assholes.
We have degenerated into a caveman mentality. From the beginning this nation was made up of evil, greedy, murderous leaders. We are destined to suffer the consequences of our hypocrisy and we cannot avoid our pitiful collapse. Historians will not treat us very kindly. Read "The People's History of the United States" by Howard Zinn and you'll learn that we have been on this path since the beginning.
I agree. This hard truth is too hard for most Americans to bear. In many forums, when this is brought out, you have a bunch of people saying, "Everybody else does it too". They don't know that but they just want to change the subject because, up until now, they have benefited from the status quo. Admiting they are part of a criminal enterprise would cost them money so they don't admit it. It's all about money for the fools.
Where is the so called "Right to Life" crowd in all of this? They only seem to care about the so called unborn and then only those where the parent or parents have Insurance coverage. Where are the Churches, Synagogues and Mosques? I don't see any of this crowd doing squat!This is one of the MOST important Moral and Ethical issues of our age and yet all I hear from this qtr. is deafening silence!
Well said. The incredible hypocrisy of the religious organisations is mind boggling.
We'll get no help from them. We have been robbed. Health care was hijacked and made a commodity. Once, long ago. a doctor would treat you first and bill you later. Everyone knew it was in their best interest to keep the doctors paid and the patients healthy; it was part of a humane, civilised, viable community. When people didn't pay their doctor, it was because they were too poor; not because they were trying to "game" the system. The only ones who have gamed AND trashed the system are the insurance corporations. We need to get them TOTALLY out of the picture.
I have a dual chamber pace maker requiring two vists a year. In 10 minutes they run a computer program which tests the leads and pacemaker computer routines. They just raised the rates 20%! WTF! And there is no COLA increase because the "cost of living" has gone down? I consider a pacemaker monitoring cost rather vital to staying alive, don't you, President Obama?
There won't be a public option come out of US "health care reform",
due to our investing far too much of our treasure in saving the banks and our senseless wars in Afghan/Pak and Iraq.
The Senators realize this; there isn't any funding left for health care.
Senator Tom Harkin has promised public option in legislation by Christmas, but all of his career he's spoken out of both sides of his mouth. He's famous for holding contrasting views simultaneously. He voted to support the Afghan war, and the war on Iraq, and that's where so much of our treasure has gone.
Time to cue John Prine's "Sam Stone"...
Bill in Dubuque