Tornadoes, Suicide Bombs, and the U.S. Health Care Dead and Broke

Mike & Friends Blog

Donna Smith

Donna Smith, American SiCKO, is executive director of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation

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May 16th, 2013 9:00 PM

Tornadoes, Suicide Bombs, and the U.S. Health Care Dead and Broke

Pain and suffering in the U.S. Health Care system mounts again

By Donna Smith

The news today is grim, to be sure. Tornadoes in Texas with the dead and the missing, Roadside, suicide bombs in Afghanistan with U.S. casualties. All awful and all part of the nightly news coverage. Then we worry about the scandal at the IRS and who knew what when about the embassy killings in Benghazi, as news reports that swirl with delight about political dysfunction.

Who reported on the U.S. health care dead today? 123 of them. Who reported on the 1,978 U.S. health care bankrupt today? No one except those around the world who read this blog and helped tell their own citizens in other lands about how not to run a health care system. The dead are dead because they lacked access to needed care, and they lacked access because they either lacked coverage or the money to pay for care or both. Of those who went bankrupt due to medical crisis or debt, three-quarters had health insurance at the time there illness or injury occurred.

I suppose the suffering is all relative, eh? We're so used to the U.S. health care dead and broke, we just ignore it. It has become the ugly but accepted cost of doing the business of the medical-financial-industrial complex in the United States. Even if the pain is in our own families, we turn a blind eye or worse -- we blame the sick and the injured.

I did one interview on Montreal News Talk radio CJAD (last 8 1/2 minutes of the show from May 16), and my blog was published in Spanish and read by residents of more than 12 countries. So, the U.S. health care dead and broke are talking and traveling.

Killed in tornadoes in the U.S. to date, 2013: 9 (worldwide 67 dead from tornadoes)

Killed in suicide bombs in Afghanistan today: 15 (6 were Americans)

Now, the U.S. health care system dead and bankrupt:

The 2013, to date, U.S. medical-financial-industrial -complex system dead: 16,728
The 2013, to date, U.S. health care system bankrupt: 269,018

We could end all of this pain by demanding an improved and expanded medicare for all for life system. We really could. How many more dead and broke do we need to see?

Follow my daily blog on: http://donnasicko.blogspot.com/