The equivalent of forty 747’s crashing each year is the reported death toll from our lack of a national health insurance scheme.
“Across the United States, the ranks of the uninsured have swollen from 40 million to 47 million since 2000 for an increase of nearly 18 percent, according to a report by the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation focused on health care. The same report indicated that the working population aged 18 to 64 makes up rising numbers of the uninsured as insurance premiums soar and companies cut back on coverage.”
“The consequences are increasingly well known: inequities in access to care, avoidable mortality and poor quality care, financial burdens on people who are uninsured or under insured, and lost economic productivity,” Commonwealth Fund President Karen Davis wrote in a report. “The U.S. spends twice as much on health care as the median industrialized nation but does not systematically achieve the best quality care.”
“Gaps in health-care coverage lead to an estimated 18,000 deaths and as much as $130 billion in lost economic productivity annually, according to Commonwealth.” (bold emphasis is Medicynic’s)
Medicynic 