Some staggering stats:
Check out the full list of frightening stats in this powerful infographic:
Created by: Medical Billing and Coding. Hat tip to Chris Bodenner.
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Hard to believe.
Doesn't this and other damnig data beg the question:Who Cares?
We are building hospitals in Iraq and Afghanistan and so many people spout that we have the BEST HEALTHCARE IN THE WORLD.
WE BUILD ROADS AROUND THE WORLD BUT OURS ARE FALLING APART. WE BUILD SCHOOLS AROUND THE WORLD WHILE OURS FALL APART. WE PROTECT COUNTRIES THAT COMPETE WITH US FOR MARKET SHARE.
SO WHO CARES, IT IS ONLY US OURSELVES THAT SUFFER.
Thanks for the link we have a coworker who found out to day her tbroher that she thought was fine and dandy and had moved last week just was rescued from the top of his roof.
Hooray for us.
We also provide a wider range of services for a much larger population. We needed a public option and still do.
It is both sad and frustrating to see the wheel "re-discovered" yet again. These kinds of facts about not only hospitals, but the American "curative" health care system, have been known, published and debated for decades. I actually wrote my Ph.
D dissertation on this subject in 1975. But, much like motherhood and apple pie, American health care is "good". Not only is it good, it is "the best". Well, that has, and will continue to be true unless the public and policy makers pay attention to empirical results that go against conventional wisdom and rhetoric.
The problem is that if a lie is repeated enough times then it becomes "The truth" ie the US is the greatest country in the world...
"1.7 million infections are contracted in the hospital each year."
This is largely due to the fact that Hospital Emergency Rooms are used as last resort Health Care Providers. By the time people come to the Emergency Room they are very sick. This causes the cost of care to go up because the Hospitals have to care for them despite the fact that they can not pay and the danger to other patients is greater as we ask the sickest people, basically illness incubators, to come to the place where people with money come when they are not seriously ill but need a surgical procedure. While at the Hospital they contract a serious illness and die.
The only way for all of us to be healthy is for all of us to have preventative care so germs and viruses do not have the chance to grow and mutate to resistant strains or new virulent versions.
The Right Wing idea that the Wealthy are somehow insulated form the poor and unhealthy is just ignorant.
Like it is not we are all in this together and short of forced detention or ghettoizing the poor, which does not bode well for Democracy, we are only as strong as our weakest link.
As someone who has lost a loved one to hospital a acquired infection I would advise everyone not to cross the threshold of a hospital unless you don't have a choice. To an american doctor the hypocratic oath means nothing, the only thing that becoming a doctor means is money. If they kill someone their only concern is that they don't get sued.