US Healthcare History: Our Very Own Killing Fields

by Donna Smith

Jenny Fritts was 24 years old. Jenny lived with her husband Sean for the past five years, and together they had a little girl named Kylee, 2. Jenny was seven-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child - a beautiful, baby girl.

Jenny is dead. Jenny's unborn baby is dead. They died because they were turned away for appropriate care at a for-profit hospital because they did not have health insurance. Sean rushed Jenny back to another hospital when her symptoms became even more severe, and he lied about having insurance to get her in the door. She was placed on a respirator in intensive care, but she didn't make it. She died. And so did her baby.

They become two more of the more than 45,000 Americans who die preventable deaths due to our broken healthcare system every year. Two more. Mother and child.

And the tragedy doesn't end there. Sean has been very depressed since he lost Jenny and their baby. The rest of his family and friends are worried about him. But he cannot get treatment either. He doesn't have insurance. (You can watch their story here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td802aj-7Sc) Imagine how you might feel. Imagine.

These are our killing fields. In America. In October 2009. In Barack Obama's America. That land full of hope and promise for those who can afford that hope and promise. Yet few in our government offices react as one might think you would when hearing of Jenny and the baby and Sean and Kylee.

I read these stories every day on the guaranteedhealthcare.org website. I read them and clean up a spelling glitch or two and then post them for the world to see. The website belongs to the nurses of the California Nurses Association and the National Nurses Organizing Committee. Patients send their stories to the nurses in cascading waves of anger and frustration and desperation. They want someone to listen and to give a damn. And they want someone to help.

But there are so many. The nurses advocate for their own patients whenever they can. And when it's possible, nurses take to the streets and to the phone to try to protest. But the numbers swell every day.

Many are like Jenny and Sean and have no insurance at all or have lost their insurance when they lost jobs or because an employer cannot afford to offer it.

Some are insured and fighting insurance companies for care that their doctors have ordered.

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/10/17-0

Death Panels, Killing Fields... The death penalty is being applied against the wrong people.

What will it take for this country to have some empathy and compassion for its own? We have more compassion for stray animals than we do for our own after we are born.

Money is our God. Not some invisible sky being that so many pretend to worship every Easter and Christmas. It is money we worship above all else.

AND those for-profit hospitals who turn away critically ill patients. It's murder, plain and simple. With malice aforethought.

In any other context, allowing the deaths of thousands of your own people for the sake of an extremist political ideology would be considered as 'supporting terrorism'. But when Republicans and RW Dems do it, it seems to be considered as perfectly OK.