A Deadlier Threat Than Terrorism
Be very scared. A killer stalks the U.S. public claiming, by recent estimates, 45,000 lives annually or one dead American about every 10 minutes. That’s 3,750 people, more than the 9/11 attacks, dying needlessly every single month.
This shadowy killer is the lack of adequate health care in the U.S. Researchers from Harvard Medical School found in late 2009 that 45,000 people die unnecessarily every year due to lack of health insurance. Heres another stunning fact: In 2008, four times as many U.S. Army veterans died because they lacked health insurance than the total number of U.S. soldiers who were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan in the same period. That’s right: 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died because they were uninsured.
These are the facts. This is the reality. Osama Bin Laden and his rag-tag band of ‘terrorists’ have been responsible for the deaths of *far* fewer Americans than the present ‘health-care’ industry and the politicians who support it. The harm they have done to America far outstrips any external threat yet politicians continue to wrangle and score political points rather than agreeing there’s a serious problem in America that needs to be tackled while all the time ordinary people are dying .
The very modest and limited health-care reforms that Obama proposed, which required a single-payer option and universal coverage to retain any credibility, were crippled beyond recognition by cynical republicans desperate to damage him for political gain and by the greed of big business protecting obscene levels of profit. Their personal interests were more important to them than people dying. By any reasonable standards, these are bad people. That was a bad thing to do. How can they possibly be allowed to get away with it ? Yet they will .
There has been absolute hypocrisy at the very heart of American public debate over health care. It is the bedrock, fundamental duty of any administration to protect the lives of the people who elect it. If every minor ‘terrorist’ scare can dominate the news while a far more deadly danger is ignored what kind of mad Alice in Wonderland world are we living in ? Why do people put up with this ?
Since theres a war on ‘terrorism’ and another on ‘drugs’ surely its not asking too much for a ‘war on inadequate health-care’ ? I guess that isn’t quite such a catchy sound-byte though. And maybe theres less profit to be made.
