Poverty Kills (Even In America)

Every now and then I run across a post so well-written that I would not add or change a word of it. My friend Thurman over at Thurman's Notebook has written just such a post. All I can do is say I agree with every word he has written, and then pass it on to you. Here is what he has written:

Poverty is indeed a weapon of mass destruction, and it is always wielded against the poor and working classes. When a good man or woman’s child is in need of food, shelter, or medicine, he or she will do anything, suffer any indignity to provide comfort and care for their little one. The powerful few – those among us who have more than they will ever need – know this and have used this fact to maintain their power and often obscene wealth for centuries.

On September 13, 2011, Dr. Garret Adams, president of Physicians for a National Health Program, testified before the Subcommittee on Primary Health and Aging of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on the question, “Is poverty a death sentence?” Dr. Adams established the Beersheba Springs Medical Clinic, an all-volunteer, not-for-profit clinic in November of 2010, in response to the overwhelming need for affordable medical care he witnessed in that community.

Here are a few of Dr. Adams’ remarks before the committee:

I dedicate this testimony to all those Americans for whom poverty is, has been, or will be a death sentence. And also to those Americans for whom illness is a poverty sentence.

According to a recent Harvard study, 45,000 Americans die every year because of lack of health insurance, a stark figure. The late Surgeon General Julius Richmond, however, reminds us that “Statistics are people with the tears wiped dry.”

Today I will tell you about some of those people whom I know or have known, all of whom failed or are failing to get necessary life-saving health care because of financial constraints – most impoverished; others not yet impoverished, but who died waiting for approval by a health insurance company of an expensive life-saving procedure that never came or came too late.

Kentucky

David Velten, Louisville. 32 years old. School bus driver. Wife, two young sons. Chronic liver failure. I met David in June 2006. He was initially denied a liver transplant by his insurance company, but due to public pressure, the company relented and allowed it. But it was too late. He died in 2007 several months after the transplant.

Cheryl Brawner, Louisville. 50 years old. Legal secretary, avid bicyclist, friend. Acute leukemia. Advised at Fred Hutchinson Hospital in Seattle to have a bone marrow transplant. Was in remission awaiting approval from the insurance company for the transplant. She waited and waited and waited. Cheryl relapsed and died of her leukemia while waiting for approval.

Clay Morgan, Henry County. Automobile mechanic, owned his own business. Malignant melanoma. Received treatment, improved, thought to be cured, but now was bankrupted. His cancer returned. Depressed and unwilling to bring more medical debt on his family, Clay went into the back yard and took his own life.

Grundy County, Tennessee

Grundy County is the poorest county in Tennessee, 95th out of 95. The median household income is $25,619. Sixty-six per cent of school children qualify for free lunch. Nineteen percent of the population is illiterate. Correspondingly, it has the lowest county rank in overall health. The ratio of population to primary care provider is 7,122 to 1, compared to the national ratio of 631 to 1.

Beersheba Springs is on the Cumberland Plateau in Grundy County.

Doris. 58 years old. She and her husband operated a small local restaurant before her illness forced them to close the restaurant. Estimated annual income: $12,948. Came to our clinic because of a lump in her breast. She had heard we offered mammograms. We diagnosed breast cancer. Because she had breast cancer, she was able to get TennCare to pay for her mastectomy and treatment, but the coverage is only for the cancer treatment.

Bob. Double hernias. Surgeon agreed to fix for $500, but hospital charge will be $8,000. He can’t afford it. His hernias will not be fixed.

Woman with broken arm. 64 years old. No insurance. I saw this woman about three weeks ago. She had a crooked left forearm and limped. She had fallen in March, breaking her left arm and her left leg. She went to a hospital emergency room where she was seen by an orthopedic surgeon, who recommended surgery to properly fix her arm. The surgeon agreed to do it in spite of the lack of insurance, but the hospital refused to allow use of the operating room since she couldn’t pay.

Woman with blood sugar >500 mg percent. The normal value is around 100 mg percent. Hers was a life-threatening level of hyperglycemia. We sent her to a hospital emergency room. She knew she had diabetes. She owned a glucometer, but could not afford the strips to test her blood sugar.

Did reading that leave you outraged? It did me. Left mad enough to eat nails and spit bullets!

What the hell is wrong with us? As a nation? As human beings? At what point does the profit motive of an insurance company or a person’s inability to pay for time spent in an operating room outweigh the human right to decent and necessary medical treatment?

Let this be a warning to all employees of hospitals and insurance companies who’s job is to approve or deny services based on whether or not someone is able to pour a few more pennies into the bank accounts of your bosses. One of these days you will be called to account for your part in these crimes; not by any god or government, but by your neighbors, the survivors of those who’s lives were shortened and who suffered needlessly while you were ‘just doing your jobs’. You’ll find no quarter here.

P.S. -- If your not a regular reader of Thurman's Notebook then you're missing out on some good stuff.