Poverty is much more complex than you may wish to acknowledge. It isn't the domain of the uneducated; we could all end up living there someday, for at least part of our lives.
(a brief excerpt from a paper I wrote recently, that applies to you and yours:)
"Many Americans are one serious illness or hospitalization away from bankruptcy. In fact, half of all U.S. personal bankruptcies come as a result of medical bills (Himmelstein, Warren, Thorne & Woolhandler, 2005; NCHC, 2007)."
"In 2005, nearly two-thirds of families struggling to pay medical bills already had insurance (Mahar, 2006). Three-quarters of Americans that eventually had to declare bankruptcy had health insurance at the time they became ill or injured (Himmelstein et al., 2005)."
So... don't kid yourself, or anyone else.
And if you'd like something to really feel miserable about, here's a current reading list so you can develop a more founded opinion about how tenuous things are:
Baicker, K. & Chandra, A. (2004). Medicare spending, the physician workforce, and beneficiaries' quality of care. Health Affairs, W4, 184-197.
Carrasquillo, O., Himmelstein, D. U., Woolhandler, S., & Bor, D. H. (1999). A reappraisal of private employers’ role in providing health insurance. The New England Journal of Medicine, 340, 109-114
Conyers, J. (2003). A fresh approach to health care in the United States: Improved and expanded Medicare for all [Editorial]. American Journal of Public Health, 93(2), 193.
Davis, K., Schoen, C., Guterman, S., Shih, T., Schoenbaum, S. C. & Weinbaum, I. (2007). Slowing the growth of U.S. health care expenditures: What are the options? The Commonwealth Fund Report, 47.
Devereaux P. J., Choi P. T. L., Lacchetti C., Weaver B., Schünemann H. J., Haines T., Lavis J. N., Grant B. J. B., Haslam D. R. S., Bhandari M., Sullivan T., Cook D. J., Walter, S. D., Meade M., Khan H., Bhatnagar N., & Guyatt H. (2002). A systematic review and meta-analysis of studies comparing mortality rates of private for-profit and private not-for-profit hospitals. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 166(11), 1399–1406.
Fisher, E. S. & Welch, H. G. (1999). Avoiding the unintended consequences of growth in medical care: How might more be worse? Journal of the American Medical Association, 281(5), 446-453.
Hansen, F. (2004). The curse of private funding. Workforce Management, 83(7), 79-80.
Himmelstein D. U., Woolhandler S., & Wolfe S. M. (2004). Administrative waste in the U.S. health care system in 2003: The cost to the nation, the states, and the District of Columbia, with state-specific estimates of potential savings. International Journal of Health Services, 34(1), 79–86.
Himmelstein, D. U., Warren, E., Thorne, D., & Woolhandler, S. (2005). Illness and injury as contributors to bankruptcy. Health Affairs, W5, 63-73.
Institute for Health and Socio-Economic Policy. (2005). Third annual IHSP hospital 200: The nation's most—and least—expensive hospitals, fiscal year 2003/2004. Orinda, CA: Author.
Krugman, P. (2005, April 11). Ailing Health Care. The New York Times
Lasser, K. E., Himmelstein, D. U. & Woolhandler, S. (2006). Access to care, health status, and health disparities in the United States and Canada: Results of a cross-national population-based survey. American Journal of Public Health, 96(7), 1-7.
Mahar, M. (2006). Money-driven medicine: The real reason health care costs so much. New York: Collins.
National Coalition On Health Care. (2007). Facts on health care costs. Washington, DC: Author.
Perelman, M. (2002). Steal this idea: Intellectual property rights and the Corporate confiscation of creativity. New York: Palgrave.
Woolhandler, S. & Himmelstein, D. U. (1997). Costs of care and administration at for-profit and other hospitals in the United States. The New England Journal of Medicine, 336(11), 769-774.
Woolhandler, S., Campbell, T. & Himmelstein, D. U. (2003). Costs of health care administration in the United States and Canada. The New England Journal of Medicine, 349(8), 768-775
Comments
Aye..good food for thought!
by -O-uknow on August 15th, 2007