Insurance companies killed 20,000 Americans last year by denying care

according to Bill Maher on one of his best "New Rules" yet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5REwrALHfU Nearly 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11 and we started two wars, spent trillions, killed over one million Iraqi civilians and allowed nearly 5,000 US troops to die because of it...but the Insurance companies, they continue to profit without accountability.

So, which scenario causes you greater concern? Being attacked by Al Qaeda or facing a major illness or injury that isn't covered sufficiently by insurance?

I am insured, but I passed up an EKG last summer because it was going to cost me $7500.

I spent $800 at Costco for a Nordic Track elliptical trainer and I use it every day.

Probably better for me than the EKG.

But if I'd died from not having that EKG, I wouldn't have shown up in those statistics, because I'm insured.

those that are denied insurance because of an existing condition or who can't afford insurance...well, we know of at least 46 million of those. I don't know if there are any statistics on death due to lack of insurance, but I'm betting that it does run over 20k per year.

Blue Cross wouldn't pay for this doctor I saw at the hospital if I went to her two weeks after my hospital stay.

What a scam that has been visited on the American people. I'm still astonished at the number of people who think we NEED them.

:(

Americans died from lack of health insurance in 06:

Abstract

The absence of health insurance creates a range of consequences, including lower quality of life, increased morbidity and mortality, and higher financial burdens. This paper focuses on just one aspect of this harm—namely, greater risk of death—and seeks to illustrate its general order of magnitude.

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimated that 18,000 Americans died in 2000 because they were uninsured. Since then, the number of uninsured has grown. Based on the IOM's methodology and subsequent Census Bureau estimates of insurance coverage, 137,000 people died from 2000 through 2006 because they lacked health insurance, including 22,000 people in 2006.

http://www.urban.org/publications/411588.html

more Americans are insured, but most insurance companies fight us tooth and nail when we make a claim. Maher seemed to be suggesting that around 20k insured Americans were killed because insurance companies denied their claims; that seems like premeditated murder to me. Thing is, I don't recall everyone living in fear of having to file a claim when I was younger-at least not to the degree that we do today. Did it all change, as Maher suggests, when Ronald Reagan and Gorden Gekko told us that "greed is good"?

unethical.

A publicly traded company has an obligation to their stockholders.

Insurance is supposed to provide the means to care for those who need it. (Yeah, I know....in my dreams.)

Profits are fine for many companies, but having insurance companies be among those who must make a profit for their stockholders is an abomination.

Money will always trump provide care. Always.

I would like to see all insurance companies banned from being publicly traded, and do what they should be doing: paying for people's healthcare.

they shouldn't be beholden to the interests of their stockholders. We would all prefer single payer, of course, but if they won't even give single payer advocates a seat at the table perhaps this should be our next battle. When they deny care to insure profits it's more than just immoral and unethical; it's premeditated murder in many cases, and clearly a criminal act. They should be labeled terrorists for what they put so many Americans through imho.

:P

I imagine the death list is a whole lot larger than 20,000 if you throw in people who know they don't have access to care and don't bother trying to get it. Or aren't willing to lose everything and have their families end up in poverty living in a box on the street.

had any health checkups in eight years because I can't meet the deductible if anything is wrong. My father even says "if someone tells you you have cancer, just check out early. There's no way that insurance will pay to cure you, so it's not worth it to suffer through it". I'm sure that millions feel the same way. :-(

people alive.

100,000 people die in the U.S. each year, which is slightly over 273 per day, due to lack of healthcare.

And yet this nation claims to be civilized.

An average of 195,000 people in the USA died due to potentially preventable, in-hospital medical errors in each of the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, according to a new study of 37 million patient records that was released today by HealthGrades, the healthcare quality company.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php

Medical error is an inaccurate or incomplete diagnosis and/or treatment of a disease; injury; syndrome; behavior; infection or other ailment.

In the U.S., medical errors are estimated to result in 44,000 to 98,000 unnecessary deaths and 1,000,000 excess injuries each year.<1><2> One older extrapolation suggests '180,000 people die each year partly as a result of iatrogenic injury, the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every 2 days'.<3> It is estimated that in a typical 100 to 300 bed hospital in the United States, excess costs of $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 attributable to prolonged stays and complications just due to medication errors occur yearly.

However, medical error definitions are subject to debate, as there are many types of medical error from minor to major,<4> and causality is often poorly determined.<5> The Health Grades study statistics, based on AHRQ MedPAR data, were based on administrative records, not clinical records, and largely overlooked multi-causality of outcomes.<6>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_error

1:36 mark. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x318813

I am the first one out of the gate demanding single payer universal access to medical care (NOT insurance, but ACCESS ) however

3 times in my 50 years I've seen expensive medical care do more harm than good to those I dearly love.

the first was in the late 70's - an aunt aged 47 had heart surgery - I think back then the docs were still figuring out what they were doing, but she "needed" it and her insurance was willing to pay for it. She had a stroke on the table - she lived 3 more years in an incredibly impaired state - which tortured her husband and children and drained their life savings.

Next was a childhood "mother figure" to my sister in law. 10 years ago Dana (the mother figure) was diagnosed with advanced osteoporosis after a nasty fall that broke her spine in several places. The medical community kept her alive and in extreme pain for 3 years. They had her on so damn many pain meds there's no way she was competent to consent to medical care - more surgeries and more surgeries after that for the first 2 years. All with the supposed promise of relieving all the pain and giving Dana her life back. Finally, she managed to ask my sister in law to make it stop. They managed her pain and 6 months later Dana decided to simply stop taking any nourishment. She died a few months later. An honest conversation from the start about what her life was going to be like from that point on would have been much better than blowing smoke up Dana's ass because gawd ferbid we don't want to deny anyone medical care.


Last is my Uncle James. He was diagnosed 5 years ago with an rare advanced cancer that is almost impossible to successfully treat. Only about 4% live longer than 3 years. He made it right around 3 years and was never more than 4 weeks between chemo treatments. After the initial round of treatment he realized they were going to use him as a guinea pig because it was not possible to successfully treat this cancer. The medical community spent about $1 million in 3 years on Uncle James - knowing he would die anyway - knowing they would make his last few years on this earth a hellhole because of the rigors of chemo. They blew smoke up his ass with all kinds of BS promises. He, fortunately, knew it was BS but kept his mouth shut and kept on anyway, hoping they would learn something, anything, to make it a little easier on or a little more successful on the next sucker they used for experimentation.


Denying care is a flat out crime most of the time, but now and again, denying care is the most humane thing we can do.

Sorry about this... I refreshed posting a response to what appears to have been a different and now removed thread, and it got put here instead by DU's system... Ignore.

because they don't have insurance.

A friend of mine who answers phones at a teaching hospital told me that she has patients calling up to cancel their appointments for radiation therapy because they are no longer insured and can't pay the bill. Even if the doctor waives his professional fee, there are expensive treatment fees. So here we have a state-of-the-art cancer treatment center with cancer patients dying in the immediate vicinity for lack of insurance.

by Aetna and big pharma. I've been in remission for six months but, now they are refusing to pay for PET Scans. Even Medicare - won't even pay 30 bucks co-pay. WTF, am I too old to waste money? I'm 59 and over the course of my life have been healthy and never need insurance to pay anything. Now I NEED THEM and they wrote me off. Please keep fighting for reform.

statistic. Please write to Michael Moore, Rep. Conyers and Kucinich and tell them your story. This is the kind of thing our reps need to be told again and again until we HAVE real reform! It should be ILLEGAL for insurance companies to deny the claims that they have sworn to pay!

Hang in there! ;hug:

That is incredibly sad, I'm sorry that to them (Big Pharma) you a just a statistic and to them - it's all about the bottom line.

:kick:

work and die to create wealth for less than 1% of it's citizens. I don't see that tiny percentage as even one that buys much stuff; they just amass more and more wealth. It all comes back to what Maher says in the "New Rules" segment; people were always greedy, but we didn't always see that as a virtue. Reagan and the fictional Gekko (along with Ayn Rand, imho) changed America's views on greed. How do we change it back? It was once a vice; a deadly sin because of the damage it causes. But even now the poor are unwitting soldiers for the rich (just look at the teabaggers). I still think that it comes back to the Fairness Doctrine. Only the wealthy in this country have a bullhorn, so no matter how unhappy Americans are the ruling elite can continue to promote the status quo through the media.