How does the exceptional nation stack up to the rest of the developed world? Ask young American men, who for the last thirty years have the lowest chance in the developed world of surviving to age 50 or the infants who have the best chance of dying before age 5. Americans have the exceptional opportunity to die more often than people in other developed countries from heart or lung disease, obesity or diabetes. Isn’t it time to point the finger of blame where it belongs —at the heart of a corporate scam to make as much money as possible while ordinary Americans pay the price in untreated illness and premature death. Time to start fighting for single payer universal healthcare in a country that has the highest rate of women dying from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, workers paying 12% of their earnings to get poor-quality health insurance that comes with unaffordable premiums, deductibles, and co-pays, where medical errors, the third leading cause of death in the U.S., kill over 250,000 people every year. A country where suicide is the second leading cause of death among children 10-18, where 20% of the people cannot pay their monthly bills. Are we talking about some banana republic in South America, or maybe one of the poorest countries in the world in Sub-Sahara Africa like Guinea or Mali where average life expectancy is around 60? If that’s what you think, you’re in for a big surprise, read “Going to Hell in a Handbasket — Is U.S. Healthcare Too Broken to Fix?”
