It really is that simple and that clear cut. The Shrill One:
The end result is that the uninsured receive a lot less care than the insured. And sometimes this lack of care kills them. According to a recent estimate by the Urban Institute, the lack of health insurance leads to 27,000 preventable deaths in America each year.
But are they really preventable? Yes. Stories like those of Trina Bachtel and Monique White are common in America, but don’t happen in any other rich country — because every other advanced nation has some form of universal health insurance. We should, too.
All of which makes the media circus of a few days ago truly shameful.
Some readers may already have recognized the story of Trina Bachtel. While campaigning in Ohio, Hillary Clinton was told this story, and she took to repeating it, without naming the victim, on the campaign trail. She used it as an illustration of what’s wrong with American health care and why we need universal coverage.
Then The Washington Post identified Ms. Bachtel, the hospital where she died claimed that the story was false — and the news media went to town, accusing Mrs. Clinton of making stuff up. Instead of being a story about health care, it became a story about the candidate’s supposed problems with the truth.
In fact, Mrs. Clinton was accurately repeating the story as it was told to her — and it turns out that while some of the details were slightly off, the essentials of her story were correct. After all the fuss, The Washington Post eventually conceded that “Bachtel’s medical tragedy began with circumstances very close to the essence” of Mrs. Clinton’s account.
And even more important, Mrs. Clinton was making a valid point about the state of health care in this country.
In other words, this was a disgraceful episode. It was particularly sad to see a number of Obama supporters (though not the Obama campaign itself) join enthusiastically in the catcalls against Mrs. Clinton’s good-faith effort to put a human face on the cruelty and injustice of the American health care system.
Look, I know that many progressives have their hearts set on seeing Barack Obama get the Democratic nomination. But politics is supposed to be about more than cheering your team and jeering the other side. It’s supposed to be about changing the country for the better.
And if being a progressive means anything, it means believing that we need universal health care, so that terrible stories like those of Monique White, Trina Bachtel and the thousands of other Americans who die each year from lack of insurance become a thing of the past.
Obama claims he wants universal health care but that’s bogus, he runs bogus Harry & Louise ads, the “creative class” [cough] is walking it back, and Elizabeth Edwards says Hillary’s plan is better.
I know Hillary’s plan isn’t single payer. But it least she cares about the policy.
And since Obam’s campaign isn’t about policy, well, we can’t expect him to care about health care policy, eh?
Even though the system we’ve got now is killing 27,000 people a year.
UPDATE Daily Howler points out how our famously free press — with, of course, the willing assistance of the famously “progressive” Boiz on the Blogs — Gored Clinton on this one, too:
[W]e’ll say again what we’ve said before: Largely because she’s an obvious press corps target, Clinton was unwise to repeat this story without professionally fact-checking first. When you’re a target of press corps wrath, you will be fact-checked, as others are not. The press corps will leap at the chance to condemn you—even before they themselves have completed fact-checking your tale for themselves.
[Gore made the same mistake at the first Bush-Gore debate, concerning that school desk in Florida. In Gore’s case, he was taking his facts straight from a major newspaper report about overcrowding in a Florida high school—but a few completely trivial facts had changed since the story appeared. The story’s essence was completely unchanged. But the press corps was waging its war against Gore, and he was savaged for his latest vile tale—often by journos who grossly misstated the facts of the actual story. This happened just a few weeks before an election which changed the world’s history.]
Tepid Obama supporter BTD thinks that since Hillary didn’t counterattack the press on this, Obama’s a better candidate in the general. Well….
Front page
We need to put the PROGRESS
back in progressive. Progressivism should mean more than fighting FISA bills.
FISA was huge
But it was a first step. We had no hope of restoring Constitutional government without it.
But we need more from government than an absence of tyranny.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Defining Progressive Down
FISA was huge, lambert, but how pathetic is it that it’s seen as a progressive victory? It used to be that following the basic tenets of the Constitution wasn’t particularly liberal or conservative.
Which is why I tend to agree with Melissa McEwan that simply hating Bush or wanting to restore habeas corpus or opposing telecom immunity makes you a progressive. It just makes you someone who believes in the Constitution and there are people on both sides of the ideological divide who agree on these issues even if very few on the conservative side happen to be current members of the Republican Congress. Bob Barr and Ron Paul basically agree with these things and they’re no progressives.
Nope, as you say, we need more than simply a government that isn’t a dictatorship. The Blogger Boyz and Congressional Democrats get no “progressive” cred for their FISA work. They deserve credit for believing and standing up for the Constitution, but that’s different than credit for being progressive.
FISA got ignored all along by Bush, and
didn’t move us forward—it simply underlined already existing protections/rights that had intentionally and criminally been ignored by the GOP.
A truly progressive response to Watergate then (and Reagan and Bush since) would have been to totally separate DOJ from the Executive branch, and to legally mandate harsh criminal punishment no matter who broke our privacy laws—president, govt agency, or not.
And to mandate much more openness in all security/CIA/FBI/NSA/etc.
And to forbid the Pentagon and non-criminal agencies/depts from spying as well, and so on and so on …
the starting point is that none of them
mccain included, are speaking of universal single payer, in which for profit insurance companies are removed from the process. not her, not him, not huggy bear. all of them fear and obey the insurance industry.
my question is how to pressure them to view things differently. i’ve not heard or read anything about his “controversey” of hers, and her “failure” to grok the full outline of the story. i don’t care. i do care about her policy, and how her plan will help me. i pay taxes. i work hard. it’s not my fault that a breast exam costs hundreds of dollars i don’t have, nor is it my fault that if i die from breast cancer, the rest of you will pay for (some) of my treatment at the end of my life.
let’s all agree that can change. starting point: star wars pays for several years of universal health care. which canidate is willing to say so?
i’m not holding my breath, but at the same time, that’s really where we need to be.
CD, I think
that Clinton, and Obama in his own way(though I believe he is going about it wrong) understand, that single payer won’t pass. And their plans are a step in the right direction(though Clinton’s goes further, and will be compromised before passage, unfortunately Obama’s plan is compromised before it even reaches committee). Once the American public is used to Universal Coverage, the initiative will be there to progress to single payer.
And you are 100% correct on defense spending, that bloated budget must be shrunk, so these initiatives can be funded.
Bill Clinton for First Dude!!!
Personally
I think Hillary would be delighted with a Single Payer plan, but doesn’t think it would have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing. However, if a more progressive Congress sent her a Single Payer bill, it would take her about 2 seconds to sign it.
How Many People Die Because They Lack Health Insurance?
A lot. (h/t Avedon)
Damnable lies, statistics, mortality and health care
As BDBlue and Avedon point out, the Urban Institute estimated that 22,000 people died in 2006 directly as the result of not having routine health care. By comparison, however, it should also be recognized that according to the fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study an average of 80,000 Medicare patients die each year while in hospital from preventable errors.
This estimate doesn’t include preventable deaths occurring in non-Medicare patients, nor does it estimate the number of preventable deaths occurring out-of-hospital but under the care of a physician including misdiagnosis, incorrect treatment and medication errors. And this phenomenon is not a facet solely of American health care; a recent study in the UK put the risk of avoidable in-hospital death at 1:300 admissions (compared to 1:10,000,000 passenger flights for airline death).
Using these statistics, not only does it appear that you are four time more likely to die prematurely under direct hospital care than with no health care whatsoever, but also that submitting yourself to a system of universal health care is more threatening to your wellbeing than many activities we commonly think of a highly dangerous like skydiving or walking late at night through a ghetto. Fact is, I would feel far safer staggering around drunk in Hunter’s Point or west Oakland – and I’m as pastyface white as they come – than I would feel checking into a hospital.
Can this comparison really be true? Well, yes and no. The first statistic, premature death from no health care, is misleading in that it is far too narrow in its definition; there is no quantitative accounting included for the shortening of life due to inadequate preventive care, and the effect of lack of insurance and resultant late diagnosis is also vastly under-recognized; the number of premature deaths from poor to no health care is certainly much larger than cited here.
But on the other hand, the number of preventable deaths happening while receiving “adequate” health care is also under-reported. Take my word for it, a great many in-hospital screwups are never reported as such – a great many. Add to that the reality of many, many missed diagnoses and misdiagnoses, incorrect medications and inadequate followup that are an everyday occurrence even in a modern universal health care system and you have the dirty little secret of modern medical care: 99%+ of all ailments will heal on their own, without any physician involvement, and the vast majority of the other <1% will prove to be fatal within a very short time regardless of the intervention.
This is not, repeat NOT an argument against Universal Health Care; personally, I think it is a crime against humanity that we do not have it in this country. It is a caution, however, that universal availability of care does not equate to universal adequacy of care. A bigger helping of all-fucked-up is not a prescription for a better or longer life.
We need More AND Better Health Care, Please.
Since it's more profitable for people to die in complicated ways
than for people to live in simple ways, we can be sure that the horrific figures you describe, bringiton, will persist until the racketeers who run the system today have been removed from their positions.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Incidentally, now that we have the death figures ...
… and clear distinctions between one plan, Hillary’s, that’s universal, and a second plan, Obama’s, that is not, isn’t it time to dispense with the canard that it doesn’t really matter which Democrat is nominated?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.