Six 9/11s a Year

We've spent billions and committed what will be trillions (yes, in the plural) of dollars to the nominal cause of responding to the attacks of 9/11/2001. We've been so serious about this that in addition to the wealth committed, we've also sacrificed the lives of thousands (the final tally's not in, but more than died on 9/11) of US service people, and the brains, minds, and bodies of tens of thousands more who came home (or will come home) permanently maimed.

It's dismal news that the analysts tell us that it will be for naught, that the way we've spent American lives and treasure has actually made the world more unsafe and unstable, and made the US more a target than it was. But let's set that aside for now. What's not debatable is the cost, in dollars and flesh.

So what would we do about something that's causing as many unnecessary, innocent deaths in the US, every year? What about something causing six times as many deaths--every year?

Would we commit to trillions on trillions of dollars, risk thousands of lives, and talk about a generational effort (it's not a conflict, so that word has to be modified...) to resolve it, once and for all?

The Institutes of Medicine of the National Academies released a report six years ago that observes,

"Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States. "

About 8,000 of those are infant deaths, the result of the shameful infant mortality rate that the US suffers from. And that's directly attributable to a lack of prenatal health care. That's the estimate--and observation--of the Centers for Disease Control.

We do very well--essentially as well as anywhere in the world--with caring for premature babies. But because of our health care system, we have many more premature babies per 100,000 births than other developed nations. And that's attributable to our health care system's failure to care for pregnant women.

Most distressing in all this is that the picture's not getting better. It's getting worse.

In 1950, the United States was fifth among the leading industrialized nations with respect to female life expectancy at birth, surpassed only by Sweden, Norway, Australia, and the Netherlands.

That's from HealthAffairs. The same source observes

The last available measure of female life expectancy had the United States ranked at forty-sixth in the world. As of September 23, 2010, the United States ranked forty-ninth for both male and female life expectancy combined.

All this while being the "leader" of the free world.

It's not for lack of funding. We spend more, and more per capita, than any other nation. Since 1970, our spending has increased at a rate significantly above what any other nation's increase in health care costs have been. But our results... have been abysmal. Spending more and more, we cover a smaller and smaller percentage of our population. Life expectancy has fallen a long way from the top tier of nations, and more and more American infants are put at risk of early death.

And?

And we do almost nothing about it.

Not a number to be proud of

Six 9/11s A Year--Every Year

Given that it's an election year, we get plenty of fearmongering. Ads, interviews and speeches that imply and suggest (if they don't say outright) that if some candidate is (or isn't) elected, we will suffer hell and damnationattacks on "the homeland" and that billions-and-billions millions many of us will die because "they" will come and get us. Here, at home. In our offices, living rooms, kitchens, gyms, bedrooms.

Scary. If you don't elect the right candidate, you'll get another 9/11. Or maybe, because you were so bad, and God really hates you now, more than one 9/11.

I'm sick of it. It's such specious nonsense (literally), and it's also fantastically hypocritical.

We suffer six 9/11s a year in the United States of America. This year, last year, the year before--and will next year and the year after. We -- our government -- do nothing.

Over 18,000 people will die unnecessarily this year. That many dies last year. That many will die next year. I might be one of them. You might be one of them. If not, your parent, child, friend or neighbor will be one of them. The odds are that we'll do nothing. They have come to get us for years and years and will come this year, and will come next year... and odds are we'll just go about our business--being afraid of other people most of whom would simply like us to go away so that they can try to rebuild their war savaged countries.

We're spending trillions of dollars to protect ("protect") ourselves from things that aren't likely to happen--and doing it badly, ineffectively, inefficiently and venally--and we're not willing to spend billions to protect ourselves from six 9/11s a year.

Just read it.

Lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States.

... America ... is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage.

I'm a Universalist. I believe in attempting universal salvation in this life. Salvation from infectious disease, cancer, mental illness and other disorders. Not at some future date, not pie in the sky salvation -- maybe -- in the hereafter.

Today and every day.

Feed the hungry. Heal the sick. House the homeless.

If we accept six 9/11s a year, why not accept just one more and ignore it too? The idea is absurd. So why are you accepting six a year?

Someone explain this to me...

Back in the early 1970s, the minimum wage provided an income to someone working 40 hours a week that could be lived on modestly, even when supporting a family. Now, even by official standards, the minimum wage only buys about half as much of the basics of life--and for anyone who has looked at the cost of housing and transportation lately in urban areas... it's pretty clear that it's worse than that.

Back then, health care was a common feature of "good jobs" (which were far more common), and for those who didn't have it, well, an encounter with the medical system was not likely to make one bankrupt.

I'm just at a loss. We have a society which officially proclaims that boatloads of money have been being made for years, and that productivity is waaaay up since the 1970s, and yet somehow... those on the low end of the economic ladder are vastly less able to survive, and essentially unable to afford any health care other than what Uncle Sam provides. So our government wants to cut back on that (yes, yes, I know that Bush "wants" to give the program an additional $5 billion over the next five years... but it's a fact that the amount is insufficient to pay for the program at the current levels--due to rising costs. It's a cut, because medical inflation will devour all of it and then some). And yet more of us are more exposed to health care crises than we were 35 years ago. We're less likely to have health care coverage, and the coverage is far more likely to turn out to have holes that have been cut into it specifically to avoid actually having to pay for health care (in some cases, cut into that safety net when the insurers could see precisely where you were falling).

Is it just that our elite classes have forgotten the lessons of history? Populations that get driven into desperation spasm, and spasm in very ugly ways.

Are We Capable of Enlightened Self-Interest, Still?

Paul Krugman quotes FDR, and observes...

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.” So declared F.D.R. in 1937, in words that apply perfectly to health care today. This isn’t one of those cases where we face painful tradeoffs — here, doing the right thing is also cost-efficient. Universal health care would save thousands of American lives each year, while actually saving money.

So this is a test. The only things standing in the way of universal health care are the fear-mongering and influence-buying of interest groups. If we can’t overcome those forces here, there’s not much hope for America’s future.

So the question is, are we as a people still capable of enlightened self-interest?

I watched Sicko finally, last night. The last week had been too much a frenzy to find the time. It's not that a great deal of what Moore had to tell was news to me. I'd heard the number of Americans uninsured. I knew--from personal experience--how obscenely expensive basic health insurance is, even for those of us whose health is good enough to get the cheapest rates. I also have seen the absurdity; my younger son was denied coverage--completely denied, not merely 'uprated' (charged more for being higher risk) because he'd sprained the hell out of his foot a year ago... and been treated to minimize the discomfort and to speed the healing. In the process, a transient diagnosis of the condition (completely cleared up) made him uninsurable. He's in superb health, hasn't been to a medical facility since his birth other than for the common injuries of boyhood, and is active. But uninsurable. And so on....

But still, the movie hit me like a kick in the gut. It wasn't the failures of our system. It wasn't the criminal malfeasance of those running the for-profit system we're caught in. It wasn't even that other nations--most other non-Third World nations--have managed to do vastly better. It was the brutal dichotomy, the comparison of the basic humaneness of the societies that provide decent health care... with the home of land of the once-free and the home of the depraved.

Those are hard, hard, hard words to write. I spent my teens living abroad; I came home eyes wide-open, aware of America's failings, flaws and history... and yet very much a patriot. At least then, it seemed that all in all... this was the finest nation on earth. Today, I don't feel I can say that--our leaders violate the Constitution and the law, arrange for torture and condone it, make war without justification, and the country just seems to tolerate it. Grumble... and go back to shopping, or watching TV.

And we even put up with our own people, here at home, being allowed to die, to boost profits.

I think Krugman's test is apt. If we can't do this, for ourselves...