AFL-CIO: 18,000 People A Year Die From Lack Of Health Care Coverage

[Omaha Steve]

By Doug Cunningham

: “There’s at a minimum 18,000 people a year who die because they didn’t have health insurance.”

Heather Booth, director of the AFL-CIO’s campaign for universal health care coverage. The campaign is building a million-person army of activists to make universal health care a focus of the 2008 presidential election in an effort to secure universal health care coverage in the U.S. by 2009.

: “Our focus in this AFL-CIO health care reform campaign is build together that kind of army with educating and engaging our members, inoculating them against some of these lies and false statements that are gonna be said - and then in organizing, organizing, organizing.”

More than fifteen thousand people have responded to the AFL-CIO’s online health care survey at healthcaresurvey,afl-cio.org Booth says the stories of suffering under America’s current health care system are heartbreaking and come from people in all walks of life.

[Vinca]

1. I'd like to know the number of people WITH insurance who die

because of uncovered "pre-existing conditions," failure to seek medical treatment because they can't afford the deductible, denial of coverage that is eventually reinstated . . . too late, etc. The entire premise the insurance industry operates on is taking in more money than it pays out. Their profit is your denial of care. That number is probably far greater than the 18,000 dead from no insurance at all.

[Clovis Sangrail]

2. link please

I'm really curious how they came up with that number.

Is this people who die and don't have adequate health care?
(rather than because they don't have health care)

Sorry, this smells like propaganda.

[Lars39]

3. Here's one:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/healthcare/2002-05-22-insurance-deaths.htm

[Cerridwen]

4. Link to the 2002 report (one in a series) and the agency who sponsored the report

http://www.iom.edu/CMS/3809/4660/4333.aspx

From the summary:

Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage: Too Little, Too Late, the second report in a series of six from the Institiute of Medicine's Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance, examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status.

The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million - one in seven - working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country.

The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash. (emphasis added)

[Donnachaidh]

5. And the health insurance response, via their client Ebenezer Scrooge

I quote:

"Ebenezer: If they would rather die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Wouldn't it be wonderful if a few of the press poodles would start investigating just a few of the people who were turned away and died?

[mzmolly]

6. Yet the "pro-life" crowd complains that we want it.

Health care is not an option in a civilized Nation.

[bobbolink]

7. Many doctors believe it's much higher than that!

I volunteered quite a bit for a single-payer group, and there were physicians who said that figure is seriously low.

Many have horrible tales to tell about trying to treat a patient, only to be rebuffed time and time again from the insurors. The morale is often low among physicians.

We will get decent health care (re: single-payer universal) when and ONLY WHEN we demand it!