I picked up this web site, freeclinics.us from Bill Moyers. Looks like there is a movement afoot that is spreading across the country. Many Medical folk are being sensitized to the crying needs of health care for all those that have fallen through the cracks. Nicholas Kristof has written in the New York Times that 15 of Americans have no health insurance. Another 8% he says are underinsured. The columnist makes an interesting suggestion: “I propose,” he says, “if health reform fails this year, 15 percent of members of Congress, along with their families, randomly lose all their health insurance and another 8% receive inadequate coverage”. Read the article for yourself.
One of my favorite writers (of The Soloist fame), Steve Lopez has an amazing article about interviewing people at the free week-end clinic in Inglewood, California in August. If Americans could clear away the smoke-screen foisted on us by insurance and pharmaceutical companies we would see the heartbreak just beneath the surface of the richest country in the world.
Kristof reminds us that an article in the American Journal of Public Health finds that nearly 45,000 Americans die every year as a consequences of not having insurance. That’s one needless death every twelve minutes.
Prophets are supposed to tell the truth. So are preachers. If Americans can see our problem—I do believe we might just push our representatives to do something that matters about health care for us all.
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