Think 18,000 Lives are Worth Saving? Then Let's have a National Health Care System.

OK, this is the kind of shit that makes me really mad when it comes to our health care system and our supposed "news media" whose very job it is is to keep us informed of the world around us.

First, why doesn't the media keep us informed of numbers like this? They're just a JOKE at this point. Second, when the media finally DOES do its job, why does no one seem to care very much?

Nicholas D. Kristof wrote an op-ed piece at NYTimes.com that quotes a staggering figure--one that made me slide off the runway of my day when I first read it. I was dumbfounded. Now, hopefully, you are, too.

Here's a cutting from Kristof's op-ed:

In 2006, Nikki White died at age 32. "Nikki didn't die from lupus," her doctor, Amylyn Crawford, told Mr. Reid. "Nikki died from complications of the failing American health care system."

"She fell through the cracks," Nikki's mother, Gail Deal, told me grimly. "When you bury a child, it's the worst thing in the world. You never recover."

We now have a chance to reform this cruel and capricious system. If we let that chance slip away, there will be another Nikki dying every half-hour.

That's how often someone dies in America because of a lack of insurance, according to a study by a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. Over a year, that amounts to 18,000 American deaths.

What.

The.

Fuck.

When I first read that, I immediately made the same connection Kristof does in the very next paragraph in his piece.

Every year SIX TIMES the number of people who died on 911 die because they can't afford proper health care.

Yet, to avenge the deaths of 3000 we've spent over a trillion dollars.

Which would you rather do?

1) Spend a trillion and cause the deaths of thousands of American soldiers, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghanis (and fail to capture bin Laden or bring stability to the countries you invade)

or

2) Save 18,000 lives a year and improve the lives of those 18,000 and many more while spending nowhere near a trillion dollars in the process

It's a simple choice, in my mind. We're not any more safer for taking option #1. In fact, it's possible the deep-ass hole our economy is in might not be so deep if it weren't for us invading two countries.

Just think about it:

Spend a few hundred billion and save the lives of tens of thousands of Americans or spend over a trillion to stop more 911s from happening. You'd need three more 911s to see as many dead as you would not paying for poor people's health care. It would take 107 more Oklahoma City bombings or 7.5 Pearl Harbor attacks to see as many Americans dead as we do the number of dead caused by a lack of affordable health care.

Sure, sure, health care companies need to make a living. That's why they exist. Apparently.

That whole "saving lives" thing? Yeah, that's um... hey, what IS that about, anyway?

---

Orignal From: Think 18,000 Lives are Worth Saving? Then Let's have a National Health Care System.