Posted on 12/03/2009 4:17:32 AM PST by Roos_Girl
The U.S. House of Representatives recently acted to end a national tragedy.
According to a recent Harvard study published by the American Journal of Public Health, 44,789 Americans die each year because they have no health coverage. For uninsured Americans, the mortality rate is staggering. In any given year, if you take two Americans who are physically identical -- same height, same age, same race, same weight, even same smoking history -- and one has health insurance and the other does not, the one without health insurance is 40% more likely to die.
That’s 122 Americans who die every day, simply because they have no health insurance. In the time it takes you to read this, one more will die. In my opinion, all of them could be saved.
Congressman Grayson meets with people opposed to the health care reform bill at his office in Washington on November 5th
Since the start of the health care debate this year, I have heard real-life examples of this horror happening every day. Thousands of people shared their stories. These are the stories of loved ones lost, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, people who suffered terribly and then died unnecessarily, people who can no longer speak for themselves. People who waited too long to get treatment, because they couldn’t afford it. People who never sought treatment, because it would mean that their spouses and children would be left broke. People who sent us to Washington to help keep them alive and safe; people whom we failed.
These are the stories of America. A painful reality. An inconvenient truth.
I’m sure if we learned that terrorists were going to launch an attack and kill 44,789 Americans at any time next year, we would do anything in our power to prevent that. We should do the same thing now about this, because we face the same threat. Death due to lack of health care is a less visible threat. It is a threat that has gone on for generations. But it is a threat nevertheless.
The bill that we passed could save those lives. And do a lot more. If you change jobs, you will be able to keep your health coverage. If you lose your job, you’ll be able to keep your health coverage. Most importantly, if you lose your health, you’ll be able to keep your health coverage. You cannot be denied coverage or care because of pre-existing conditions. If you get very ill, and require expensive treatments, your health insurance company won’t be able to cut you off. In other words, this bill offers real coverage, not heads-we-win-tails-you-lose coverage. This bill offers you peace of mind.
President Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech identified the freedoms that we all need for a decent life. One of them is freedom from fear. Health care reform offers freedom from fear – the fear that if you get sick, and you can’t afford the treatment, you’ll die. This bill could make that fear history.
When I read those moving and sad stories from people on the floor of the House, I felt, as Abraham Lincoln said in the Gettysburg Address, that it was “far above our poor power to add or detract” from them. I gave my time on the floor to the victims of our health care system, because “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget” what happened to them. The time for talk is over. “It is for us the living, rather,” as Lincoln so poignantly observed, “to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.” That task is universal, comprehensive, affordable health care in America. With Americans dying every day because they have no health insurance, it can’t come soon enough.
Best example of the Liberal Mental Disease I’ve seen in a long time.
LLS
How about “if you keep your fu*$ing hands off every aspect of my life, I'll keep my job, therefor I'll keep my health insurance, and i’ll be less likely to get sick, as opposed to when I'm forced to live in a cardboard box under an overpass”?
I don’t see why they don’t just introduce a bill that says we’re all going to live forever.
There’s no way to pay for that, either.
Ok, dunce, (rep grayson of course) you’ve engaged me purely on the emotional level, now how about some proof. PS, any emotional rants for the yearly 1,000,000 babies receiving healthcare at planned parenthood clinics and their death rate? I didn’t think so! The politics of forgetfulness ain’t alive around here bozo.
Grayson is a pitiful idiot of the left. He hates the USA. His language betrays him. He should be overthrown.
Where have we heard this phrase before, hmmmmm?
We ALREADY HAVE SOCIALIZED MEDICINE in the United States: Medicaid, Medicare, SSDI. We are already paying for this system. It needs to be fixed—it does not need to be replaced. I’m a poor person and a big (the biggest) reason I’m poor is that as the former owner of a small business for nearly 15 years I made good money but was taxed nearly to death. I still work—I work two jobs right now. The taxes being deducted from my pay make it impossible for me to consider even a cheap private health insurance policy right now. If I had not been having to pay such a high penalty for working hard and being successful, I would not be in the shape I am now. Yes: The health care industry and private insurance industry definitely need to be fixed. We have laws in place right now that can be used for same. Legislators need to get off their lazy asses and start invoking those laws to reform health care and insurance, and stop gassing about poor people who can’t afford private policies. They are wasting my money, and yours, with their constant haranguing and theorizing—they KNOW why this is a problem. I don’t know about you, but I am paying them to act, not argue.
This socialized medicine thing is absolute garbage being forced on a heretofore unwitting public. Now Americans are starting to get wise about health care and a lot of other things as well. Better late than never.
Vote these scoundrels out of office the next chance you get.
128 people die every day on American roads. It maybe time to socialize auto insurance - or outlaw dying.
I still want one death certificate that says this person who “died in the street” because they didn’t have an HMO plan. Alan Grayson is mad because he only has 11 months left in office.
People with those perfect numbers for blood pressure, weight and all those lab tests.......die every day.
Who are the Republicans putting up to run against him?
>>In any given year, if you take two Americans who are physically identical — same height, same age, same race,
>>same weight, even same smoking history — and one has health insurance and the other does not, the one without health insurance is 40% more likely to die.
Is this because of a lack of proper health care, or a lack of health insurance??
Dear Grayson,
Glad to see that in your thinly veiled sarcasm you are finally in support of breeching the privacy between a patient and his/her doctor. With the government run health care system, mandating centrally maintained medical records and government boards to determin acceptable medical procedures, we would eliminate all privacy between doctors and patients.
Oh wait, what could that possibly do to your beloved Roe decision. Remember, that decision was based entirely on maintaining privacy between a doctor and patient. The government intrusion that you are begging for, will be the hammer we use to eliminate your favorite policy of murder.
Bring it on!
Doh, I copied that reply from troll thread and should have edited the sarcasm bit out. However, the rest of it is applicable.
Last I checked the death rate for all humans was 100% with or without insurance. In spite of medical advances and the passage of state run health care in other countries that rate has remained the same for thousand of years.
“44,789 Americans die each year because they have no health coverage.”
I suspect that this number is ginned up based on deaths of people who don’t have health coverage. I’ve never seen an explanation of how the cause and effect connection between deaths and lack of insurance is established, and my natural skepticism tells me there is none.
Oh, but now the death rate will drop by 45,000 a year in the US. The human wishes embedded in our legal system can override what is merely real and actual. Now we have a bigger problem: how to pay for the SS and Medicare benefits for these newly immortal Americans.
That’s because the causality is the inverse of what Grayson suggests. The people who died did not have health insurance because they knew they were going to die and knew that they could not be refused care. Or, their refusal to buy an insurance policy was symptomatic of the same incautious attitude that led to their deaths.
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