Huge Recession + For Profit Healthcare = 50+ Million Uninsured
Goldman Sachs is projecting that unemployment is expected to be 9% in the 4th quarter of 2009.
A one percent rise in the nation's unemployment rate is projected to increase the number of uninsured by 1.1 million.
A few politicians are able to connect the dots.
The always phenomenal John Conyers is one of the few connecting the dots. So are the American people.
The urgent necessity to restructure the U.S. auto industry, has plently to do with our spiraling national healthcare disaster. To ignore this reality, requires one to disregard a series of dots as big as elephant turds.
Here's what Congressman Conyers had to say yesterday about the catastrophe facing the autoworkers and the U.S. car industry. We call this connecting the dots.
Rep. Conyers stated, "America has a moral duty to ensure that all workers and their families have access to quality and affordable health care. The Big Three auto companies spend more on health care then they do on steel. This is unsustainable. We need a non-profit universal health care system that will ensure that all Americans, regardless of income and employment status, will have access to quality health care when ever working families and individuals need it. HR 676 would accomplish this goal.
No worker in America should ever fear losing their health insurance because of being laid off from their jobs.
Keeping the lights on in Detroit is also all about providing healthcare to millions of workers.
Because we don't have affordable and guaranteed healthcare in the United States, and since healthcare in our country is a privilege not a right, turning out the lights in Detroit would cost millions their ability to access healthcare.
Cutting Wages Won't Solve Detroit 3's Crisis
Automakers need direction as much as financial support from Washington, just as Japan's government molded Toyota into a world-class performer.
In every other industrialized nation, government has stepped in and given their auto companies a significant edge. Most important, they all adopted national health care and pension systems decades ago.
General Motors alone provides health coverage to a million people -- workers, retirees and families. The annual price tag is about $5 billion, which, as CEO Rick Wagoner is fond of pointing out, is more than GM spends on steel.
That burden could be lifted, to the benefit of 47 million uninsured Americans, by adopting a Medicare-style program for everyone. It would save the nation as much as $350 billion per year now spent for insurance companies to shuffle paper and deny claims.
http://www.autoworkercaravan.org/...
The huge rise in the ranks of unemployed Americans is putting massive strains on hospital emergency rooms. Imagine adding a whole bunch of autoworkers to a system which is already imploding. Read this if you dare, and pray you don't need to go to an ER.
Here's a chilling appetizer.
Even before the recession became evident, many emergency rooms around the country were already overcrowded, with dangerously long waits for some patients and the frequent need to redirect ambulances to other hospitals.
"We have no capacity now," said Dr. Angela F. Gardner, the president-elect of the American College of Emergency Physicians, which represents 27,000 emergency doctors. "There’s no way we have room for any more people to come to the table."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
And as the recession gains momentum, how in the world are laid off Americans going to be able to pay the extortionist COBRA premiums and the highest out-of-pocket expenses in the world? Ain't happening.
But the politicians tell us we have the best healthcare system in the world! They certainly do. They avail themselves of Rolls Royce healthcare, courtesy of the taxpayers, but the American people and the auto workers, can just go without.
You may be wondering where the United States is headed as we plunge into a depression recession the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1930s.
We're facing a huge uptick in the ranks of the uninsured. And you'll find all these people in the already dangerously overcrowded emergency rooms the length and breadth of the country.
When a Job Disappears, So Does the Health Care
ASHLAND, Ohio — As jobless numbers reach levels not seen in 25 years, another crisis is unfolding for millions of people who lost their health insurance along with their jobs, joining the ranks of the uninsured.
The crisis is on display here. Starla D. Darling, 27, was pregnant when she learned that her insurance coverage was about to end. She rushed to the hospital, took a medication to induce labor and then had an emergency Caesarean section, in the hope that her Blue Cross and Blue Shield plan would pay for the delivery.
Wendy R. Carter, 41, who recently lost her job and her health benefits, is struggling to pay $12,942 in bills for a partial hysterectomy at a local hospital. Her daughter, Betsy A. Carter, 19, has pain in her lower right jaw, where a wisdom tooth is growing in. But she has not seen a dentist because she has no health insurance.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
How do the politicans plan on changing things? Yes, Daschle and Obama are soliciting input from the American people, but at the end of the day, will they have the courage to properly fund a robust public option for those of us who have enough of for-profit Murder By Spreadsheet delay, deny and deceive AHIP healthcare?
Some propose to fix the problem by feeding the 50 million uninsured to the sharks for profit healthcare system. A big part of that really bad plan is to leave AHIP and its political bribery operation at the center of our healthcare system. AHIP has graciously grudgingly offered to cover everyone, even those of us with pre-existing conditions. There's a catch though, there always is when you're dealing with slick insurance salesmen. All Americans would be mandated to buy private, for profit junk insurance, which we know is insurance in name only. With AHIP junk insurance, you'll still be one illness or injury away from financial ruin.
Here's a chart from the Commonwealth Fund. Look at what American pay to keep for profit healthcare right in the center of our healthcare system.
The American people are always the victims when policians get together and cut self-serving deals which only benefit them and their benefactors.
If you think things are bad, you're not imagining anything. Things are very, very bad and about to get much worse.