"Poor people just die"

[Atticus]

I was five when "Pap" died. Pap was my grandmother's next door neighbor and, like most who lived in our neighborhood, he was a working man, a laborer. One of my grandfathers died the year after I was born and the other I saw maybe twice a year. Pap filled in for them on an almost daily basis. He let me "help" in his garden and let me pet his beagles whenever I wanted.

I came home from school one afternoon that fall of my first grade year and my grandmother told me to sit down at the kitchen table. Both my parents worked and we stayed with "Nanny" after school. She said she had some real sad news and that I needed to be a "big boy". "Pap died today. His heart was sick and it quit working. The ambulance came, but it was too late", she explained, speaking softly and earnestly.

I cried. Eventually, I asked what is always asked: "Why? Why did he have to die? Why couldn't the doctors make him well? Why couldn't they save him?"

Nanny explained that doctors and hospitals and medicine cost a lot of money and Pap didn't have a lot of money. Rich people bought medicine and had surgery and went to hospitals. "Poor people just die", she said, as gently as possible and held me while I sobbed into her apron.

In the fifties, I overheard several hushed conversations between my parents and other adults that featured the word "cancer". I didn't understand what it was, but I knew it was bad, very bad. Only later did I understand that even "routine" cancers were usually a death sentence for those without insurance or wealth or both. Family members maintained gruesome vigils while the tumors spread throughout their loved ones body and sometimes the stench of necrotic tissue required those attending to the dying to smear Vicks under their nose to keep from retching.

Are we to return to those days? Are we to once again allow money to be the real medicine in our nation? Will we be too busy to march on Washington? Too busy to hound our senators and congressmen to vote for AT LEAST a public option for health care insurance?

I can accept wealth allowing some to drive a Mercedes or a Porsche while others drive Chevys or ride the bus.
I cannot accept wealth allowing some to live while others "just die".

[Bluzmann57]

1. Now see, this is a great argument for Organized Labor

A lot of people, most of us in fact, have health insurance through our employers and that would not be possible without the Labor movement in this country.

[Atticus]

6. Absolutely!

Union labor is what made health care available to blue collar America. It is no coincidence that health care costs went up as labor's power declined. Thank you, St. Ronnie!

[pratikdaklawa]

2. The system is rigged for the rich

Whenever we do something for the people, the big business call us socialists.

[johnaries]

7. Welcome to DU! And it's sad, isn't it.

I have nothing against a Free Market as long as it's a level playing field. But the rich always have the advantage. That's why our Market needs regulation. But the rich enjoy their advantage and will spend half their fortunes on lies and propaganda to keep it.

[kdmorris]

3. Great Post

Not much I can add to this. It's unacceptable that people die when having access to medical care could save them. And any "health care reform" that further burdens the poor (mandatory health insurance, etc) is also unacceptable.

Edited to change subject line: Welcoming you to DU after you've been here 7 years (and a year longer than me) seems silly.

[Brigid]

4. And here we go again . . .

Yet another perfect example of our racket of a health care system. I don't know how many more anybody could want to convince them. :grr:

[Deja Q]

5. +1

I can accept wealth allowing some to drive a Mercedes or a Porsche while others drive Chevys or ride the bus.
I cannot accept wealth allowing some to live while others "just die".

[tpsbmam]

8. We returned to those days a long time ago.

It's estimated that 137,000 Americans have died between 2002 & 2006 because of lack of health insurance.
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf

In February of this year, TPM estimated that 2,220 people had died since Obama took office and because of lack of health insurance.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/star_mason/2009/02/2220-americans-have-died-becau.php

Believe me, we're there.


(Edited to add TPM link.)

[truedelphi]

23. Very sad and very true. n/t

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

9. K&R

[eridani]

10. What do you mean "return to those days?"

We never got away from them entirely. Medicare and Medicaid helped for awhile, but now we need single payer.

[CrispyQ]

11. This would make an excellent letter to the editor.

You last two sentences are especially powerful & moving.

k&r

[mimitabby]

12. in the 50's

Excuse me Atticus, but in the 50's cancer was a death sentence to most people. It wasn't just about wealth.
Back then health care was a lot more affordable. In fact, even in the 1970's health care was affordable.

I had my first son in a hospital and the entire bill was $800 in 1978. I remember being furious because they charged me for a tylenol (50 cents) and i had not taken any, so they removed it from my bill.
If you went to the hospital and you couldn't pay back then you got a bill. My soon to be husband hurt his knee and required surgery in 1976. He was unemployed. They fixed his knee (well, sort of) and sent him home. He paid that bill ($700) off at the rate of $5. a month. That's the way it was back then.

A lot of people in the 50's didn't go to the hospital because of fear and ignorance; not policy. My grandmother was certain that if you went to the hospital, you would die.

[Gormy Cuss]

15. You're correct that cancer survival rates were abysmal in the 1950s but

length and quality of life after diagnosis was most certainly affected by access to the available therapies just as it is today. Access tends to be related to ability to pay. While your anecdotes are true for the earlier decades those were procedures where the patient was expected to live. I doubt that even in the 1970s a patient with limited means and a largely fatal disease would have been offered the best treatment with a payment plan (and yes, I remember the 1970s.)

As for your grandmother's and others' fear of going into the hospital that was based on the fact that for many of her generation hospitals WERE a last ditch effort before dying. Everything else was handled with home remedies or a visit to the local doc.

[Generic Other]

13. Very eloquent

Thanks for posting this.

[Echo In Light]

14. "Poor people just die" ...until they eventually arise and slay their oppressors.

[lpbk2713]

16. K& +R

My mother was one of those same people in that same situation back in the 50's.

They basically just said 'there's nothing we can do for you'.

I'd like to think we as a society have made significant advances since then.

[ipaint]

17. When you live in the richest country in the world

people don't die for lack of health care, they are murdered.

[Echo In Light]

18. And to think this was a scandalous story of immense magnitude back in the 80s!

...yet here we still are, 20-30 yrs later, trying to "debate" the supposed 'need' for universal health coverage. Doomed nation.

[MoonRiver]

19. Very sad, and so true.

We have the best insurance available through my husband's job. Everyone should have exactly the same excellent health care as everyone else. The fact that they don't is the most despicable shame upon our nation. :(

[yellerpup]

20. Thanks for that poignant story.

K&R! So sad that it's the whole truth.

[asteroid2003QQ47]

21. GENOCIDE of The People, by The People, For (2 or 3% of) The People!

It's estimated that 137,000 Americans have died between 2002 & 2006 because of lack of health insurance.
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf

In February of this year, TPM estimated that 2,220 people had died since Obama took office and because of lack of health insurance.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/star_mason/2009/02/2220-americans-have-died-becau.php
(Thank you for these tpsbmam)

The information presented in this post explains the basic estimate I use. That estimate currently is 22,000 Americans dying from lack of health insurance per year. Divided by 365 days of the year, the number is 60 Americans per day.
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/star_mason/2009/02/number-of-americans-dying-each.php

*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*


*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*


*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*


*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*


*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*


*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*----*
= SIXTY DEAD AMERICANS PER DAY!

X 365= TWENTYTWO THOUSAND DEAD AMERICANS PER YEAR!

22 Thou a YEAR but don't you dare call it GENOCIDE!

(If it's not GENOCIDE, what the fuck is it?)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is a treadmill, squirrel-trap culture--drugged and frenzied with the hasheesh of industrial servitude and material luxury.
--H.P. Lovecraft

[dflprincess]

22. Actually, depending on where you live, it's the working poor & middle class who die for lack of

health care - or wind up having to declare bankruptcy.

My mom's income is low enough that her Medicare supplement is covered by the state so far (we'll see what Pawlenty's cuts do to it) it's been a great program, I wish I had her coverage.

Unfortunately, the income limits for qualifying are so unrealistically low for medical assistant programs that nearly anyone with any kind of job or even a Social Security check that's more than $800 or $900 a month does not qualify for them.

[SammyWinstonJack]

24. K&R

[angstlessk]

25. very briefly spoken in my home...my parents had saved money to build a home

but my father had a heart attack at age 39, and they never owned a home together after that, he died 10 years latter at age 49, I was 15. My mom bought a home many years after my dad died, her first home when she was 55. Before his heart attack, she used to stay home or work with my dad when he owned a cleaners, but after his heart attack she worked for a bank..I recon now it was for insurance? People just did not talk about things like that to kids...do they now?

[TBF]

26. Thank you for your post, which must have been painful to write

with digging up those kinds of memories. It is disgusting that this is allowed to happen anywhere, but especially in this country that has so many personal billionaires. Absolutely shameful.

[Juan_de_la_Dem]

27. I really like your last 2 sentences. Thx for the post

[maryf]

28. Tabling for single payer health care

a man said "costs would go down if we just let people die instead of trying to keep everybody living." After I was able to extract my jaw from my chest, I said, "I think folks ought to have a choice about that, and be given proper care if they so chose"...he probably would have thought it was appropriate for Pap to just die without help...I really have a hard time understanding sometime...

Health care for People, all people, not all for profit!!