| Rightwingers often claim that universal healthcare would hurt Americans, that we would lose our first-class healthcare system. Turns out our healthcare system ranks below 41 other countries in an important catagory, including Jordan, Cuba and Guam.
Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.
For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.
"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
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Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, while Canada and many European countries have universal health care, they say.
While the ultra-rich 1 percent have gotten considerably richer and the uppermiddle class on down have gotten poorer under Mr. George W. Bush and President Dick Cheney, healthcare for the rest of us also has fallen off.
While universal healthcare won't solve all of the nation's medical problems, it'll solve the majority of them.
I suspect that many people fear that this is a problem only for the poor to worry about, that since they work and have insurance, it's not something to concern them and they worry that their costs from taxes and their healthcare coverage would suffer under universal healthcare.
But under the present system ruled by the healthcare insurance industry, the United States already spends more on healthcare than ay other nation in real dollars and in percentage of Gross National Product.
We pay the most and get the least.
So what happens to people without insurance, isn't there a safety net for them?
Barely.
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.
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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.
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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.
As a nation we pay the most and receive the least. It's time for a new healthcare system to take care of everyone. |
