I’m not talking about some third world country, I’m talking about the United States. Approximately 50 million Americans have no health insurance and now face the prospect of being turned away from for-profit hospitals if they are in need of treatment for swine flu. So why is that a concern? Isn’t that also the way it is for these people if they break a leg or have a heart attack? Don’t they just wind up at some overcrowded municipal hospital like always? I suppose so, the only problem is that this time things might be different.
The World Health Organization has announced that there is now a severe form of the Pandemic H1N1 flu that goes straight to the lungs. It causes severe or fatal cases of the flu in young people who had been in good health. While Americans have been enjoying the summer weather and their days at the beach, the people in the Southern Hemisphere have been battling the Pandemic as it has traveled from country to country and morphed along the way. A second wave if Pandemic H1N1 is about to sweep over the U.S. and the northern countries of the world and we are woefully unprepared. Unlike Socialist Europe, we have no health care system in place to care for the general population. We have no system for providing free flu inoculations for the general public. Even more of a concern is that we don’t have the capability to cope with treating the casualties of a severe pandemic, even for our wealthiest citizens.
The World Health Organization has reported that those people who contract the very severe form of Pandemic H1N1 require intensive care in order to survive. How many of our uninsured poor will be provided intensive care in our for-profit hospitals? None. They are going to die. How many of our uninsured citizens who already suffer respiratory diseases or cardiac disease or diabetes, and thus become very high risks, will be able to be treated in our intensive care units, even if they already pay for the best insurance in the land? Very few. The simple fact is that we are unprepared, as a nation, to begin to cope with a serious pandemic. We don’t have the intensive care facilities, we don’t have an emergency plan to deal with need for such mass treatments, and we have no intent on providing it to the general public in any case.
The World Health Organization has issued a worldwide warning about the coming pandemic. It advises that the disease could have a devastating impact in those parts of the world where adequate health care cannot be obtained. They are referring to the Third World, where first class medical care is not available at any price. I guess they forgot about the 50 million – those Americans who also have no access to first class health care because they have no health insurance.
It’s coming soon. Some of those Socialist European countires are about to begin mass inoculations for the flu. The United States isn’t ready to do that yet. Maybe in October. And it will be done on a priority basis – which may not include you. Of course, you’ll have to pay for your innoculation, and if you don’t have health insurance maybe you’ll just skip it, like you always do. Welcome to the land of opportunity. Welcome to the best health care in the world. Welcome to North America’s Third World system of “medical care only for the insured and for those who can pay”.
You’re on your own.
Hi Rich! I have been giving our thinking politicians…i.e.: the ones for health care reform and the public option, my support with phone calls, e-letters, etc. As someone who lost insurance coverage due to cost, then became unable to work due to health problems and luckily was poor enough to be eligible for Medicare, I want a public option so I can get reduced price coverage till I get back on my feet.
At 47 years of age I have realized that with 2 life-threatening-without-treatment illnesses, without health insurance I simply will die. Therefore I will be for the rest of my life a pawn of the insurance companies – IF they will insure me! Then- will they continue to cover me or dump me? If the health care reform fight ends unsuccessfully then I think those of us who the Republicans and conservative Dems ignore should stage a mass suicide on these idiots’ doorsteps. We will die without coverage so why not DIE QUICKLY?!!
To add, as in your last paragraph, that vulture-face Orrin Hatch had the gall not long ago to say “The public option will not work but weaken the American health care system – THE BEST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD”. Well, guess who got a nice voice mail for his typical GOP ignorance? The dude who says the public option is “Socialism” is the same SOB with government-provided coverage. WHILE 45,000 PEOPLE A YEAR DIE IN THIS WEALTHY THIRD-WORLD HELLHOLE!
Correction: Sorry for typos-just so enraged over this issue. Comment 1-am on MedicAID temporarily to cover cost of acute care and diagnostic testing. Too young for Medicare. Thank goodness for Medicaid but with the stigma attached to it-as in made to feel like the excrement on a Republican’s shoe-I’ll be glad to have my own coverage when I’m back to work. Without Medicaid I’d already be cremated and not worrying about reform and the public option.
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