Lack of insurance causes a death every 12 minutes.

A lot has been written on this blog about the health care crisis in this country, but the crisis is so acute, and the Obama administration and congress's solution to the crisis is so disgusting, that I thought another post is in order. Take this statistic I recently came across: A study published in September, 2009 (find it here) found that the number of deaths linked to patients not being able to afford health care is 45,000 per year. That is about one person dying every 12 minutes. And most of these deaths are preventable. If the US only had something like the increasingly underfunded systems in countries like Canada or the UK, imagine the lives that would be saved every year.

The Democrats have passed a health care reform bill that the health insurance industry is celebrating. It will require uninsured people to buy private insurance, that is, to increase the revenue that the health insurance corporations get, and it puts in only the weakest restraints on the insurers' ability to deny coverage for treatment. So the insurers are going to be making more money from previously uninsured people who will be required to purchase private insurance and the government subsidies to help lower income people purchase private insurance. The most affordable plans will have huge deductibles and co-pays, meaning that even people who are able to buy insurance won't necessarily be able to afford to get health care. Not to mention the attack on abortion contained in both the House and Senate health care bills. The health care bills are disastrous for working people, and they represent a blatant giveaway to the health insurance industries. Obama and the Democrats are working on behalf of the corporations, enacting policies that will further enrich the tiny minority of people who sit atop the profit-addicted capitalist system. They are little different from the Republicans on the most important issues. Working people need a political party of their own.