Nurses Sick over ‘Let Him Die’ Moment at Republican Debate
This week’s Republican debate has now achieved perverse fame for the “Let him die” moment that occurred when the audience cheered and applauded as Wolf Blitzer asked Rep. Ron Paul (Texas) whether society should just let a sick person die if he can’t afford health insurance.
As do all of us in the union movement, the National Nurses United (NNU) expressed revulsion at the cheering.
NNU Co-President Jean Ross, RN, called the audience’s response “stunning.”
My first reaction is how far have we degenerated as a society? Everything we do is geared toward preventing illness, and getting people well. If no one cares whether our patients get well, what are we doing advocating for them and fighting for them?
A broader question, says NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro, is:
one of national identity: Do we have—or even want—a country, a nation of common purpose and support—or just a collection of amoral individuals?
Government Already Runs Health Care for Millions of Americans
Some people say they don’t want health care reform because they don’t want the government involved. Or—shiver me timbers and pass the Socialist smelling salts—they don’t want a “government-run health care system.”
Here’s news for them: The private health care system in the United States is so bad that more people already are getting their health care from the government because they can’t get it in the private sector.
This from that most Communist of daily newspapers, the Wall Street Journal:
More people are getting their health insurance from the government as the number of individuals with coverage from an employer declines…
The number of people in the U.S. without health insurance rose by about 700,000 between 2007 and 2008 to 46.3 million. The proportion of uninsured was essentially unchanged at 15.4 percent.
An additional 4.4 million people in the U.S. were insured by the government as of 2008, for a total of 87.4 million, or 29 percent of the population, up from 27.8 percent in 2007. At the same time, 1.1 million fewer people had coverage from an employer in 2008, leaving 176.3 million people with such coverage.
One-Third of Americans Went Without Health Care in Past 2 Years
Nearly 87 million people—more than one-third all Americans under age 65—were without health insurance for at least part of the past two years. Most of the uninsured came from working families.
This compelling new evidence on the need for comprehensive health care reform, including coverage for all, is contained in a new report by the health care advocacy group, Families USA.
The report, “Americans at Risk,” found that most of the uninsured lacked coverage for lengthy periods of time: 74.5 percent were uninsured for at least six months, and six in 10 were uninsured for nine months or more. More than half (52 percent) of individuals and families who went without health insurance had incomes between the federal poverty level and twice the poverty level—between $21,200 and $42,400.
