Healthcare reform in this country is not an option it is a dire need that is way past due. One would be hard pressed not to find someone who does not have their own war story about seeking medical attention and how it affected and or changed their lives.
A series of articles this weekend in the NY Daily News speaks to how broken this system is and outlines the dire consequences that were the result in numerous cases that were either not reported or reported so late that no investigation could be implemented
A months-long probe found coverups at all 11 Health & Hospitals Corp. hospitals — the only option for millions of New Yorkers who cannot afford private medical centers.
Hospital Horror Coverups
• A stroke victim's leg had to be amputated after gangrene was left untreated. No report.
• An ill infant died after sitting, unexamined by a doctor in an ER for 24 hours. Confronted for not having enough doctors on duty, they produce a "corrected" report saying there was – a month after the fact.
• A mental patient hanged himself and, after several days, died. Though hospitals must report suicides, they report this one as an "unexpected death."
• Records were altered after medical students made mistakes and an infant died.
• Logs for a respirator were changed after staff failed to notice it wasn't turned on. The patient died.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/...
This article explains in details how city hospitals systematically did not report incidents in a system that served 1.3 million patients last year alone – 450,000 had NO HEALTH INSURANCE.
What the GOP, and foes to health care reform, including the insurance industry fail to realize and understand that not reforming the current system and fixing problems as exist in NYC is that people are DYING and families are being destroyed in the current framework.
The findings come a year after employees of Kings County Hospital tried to hide the death of 49-year-old Esmin Green. Hospital staff wrote in records that she was fine; a shocking video showed Green dead on the floor.
Esmin Green Death-by-neglect case
Fatal Mistake at Coney Island Hospital
Dead constituents can’t vote, neither can those who are too sick to make it to the polls, perhaps those that are against health care reform are hoping that the uninsured and underinsured just die off thereby absolving them of any responsibility for reforming healthcare.
