Fatalities but no pretty pictures: who cares?

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Wednesday September 12, 2012 · 8:27 PM PDT

2012/09/12 · 20:27

Interesting Tale of Two Healthcare Plans" by David Cay Johnston. He mentions that, compared to other countries, we spend $2.64 for every dollar worth of health care. Unfortunately, Johnston forgets to mention that our privatized system every year kills about 120,000 Americans who die of preventable diseases. That's the equivalent of a Hiroshima-like nuclear holocaust every year. In our culture driven by corp'rat infotainment all of this is irrelevant and goes unnoticed because health care fatalities do not produce gut-wrenching, juicy pictures. Of course, the saving grace of the system is that it provides the ruling class with the profits to which by birth right they are entitled.

Don't believe the numbers? Check this out this link: U.S. Ranks Last Among High-Income Nations on Preventable Deaths. In France 56 per 100,000 die from preventable disease; in the US that is 96 per 100,000. Excess US fatalities: 300 million people times (96-56) / 100,000 =120,000 fatalities.
(Peter)

Nuke Lieberman

peternight

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Sunday August 23, 2009 · 5:47 PM PDT

2009/08/23 · 17:47

From the NYT:

<bf>Lieberman Suggests Health Care Reform May Have to Wait</bf>
By JOSEPH BERGER and DERRICK HENRY 6:48 PM ET
Senator Joseph I. Lieberman on Sunday urged the Obama administration to consider postponing an overhaul of the health care system until the economy improves.

How about we cut military spending by 50% until the economy improves and have paid for health care insurance for everyone?

By cutting military spending by 50% we could save a trillion dollars, which happens to be the amount so-called fiscal conservatives are unwilling to spend over 10 years.

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."
Martin Luther King

I wonder what MLK meant by "approaching."

peternight

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Wednesday August 12, 2009 · 8:02 PM PDT

2009/08/12 · 20:02

Here you have it once again:

Closing performance gaps would bring real benefits in terms of health, patient experiences, and savings. For example:

Up to 101,000 fewer people would die prematurely each year from causes amenable to health care if the U.S. achieved the lower mortality rates of leading countries. Thirty-seven million more adults would have an accessible primary care provider, and 70 million more adults would receive all recommended preventive care. The Medicare program could potentially save at least $12 billion a year by reducing readmissions or by reducing hospitalizations for preventable conditions. Reducing health insurance administrative costs to the average level of countries with mixed private/public insurance systems (Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland) would free up $51 billion, or more than half the cost of providing comprehensive coverage to all the uninsured in the U.S. Reaching benchmarks of the best countries would save an estimated $102 billion per year.

peternight

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Monday August 10, 2009 · 7:25 PM PDT

2009/08/10 · 19:25

This diary is dedicated to Rahm Emanuel; as nyceve said "we don't get mad, we don't bend over, we get even."

Today is V-day in Rhode Island. Of course, one cannot celebrate this without thinking of how we got to Victory in Japan, and then there is Robert Openheimer's famous quote from the Bhagavad-Gita "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds" spoken after the fateful Trinity nuclear test explosion detonated early in the morning of July 16, 1945. On the following August 6, 140,000 people were killed in the bombing of Hiroshima.

Why do I mention this? Call it a physicist's professional deformation (not contagious, unfortunately!): our Original Sin and having been trained to think about problems in terms of the order of magnitude of the relevant quantities: 100,000 fatalities, to keep the numbers simple.

Poll

22 votes Show Results

Killing random people by a wilful act of omision is:

22 votes Vote Now!

Killing random people by a wilful act of omision is:

First/second degree murder

5 votes

Manslaughter

1 vote

Is what Congress does for re-election

11 votes

Omision? You must be kidding!

5 votes

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Fatalities but no pretty pictures: who cares?

Nuke Lieberman

Where's OUR outrage?

Blue dogs bomb US: 112,500 fatalities