Healthcare Reform - Unnecessary Deaths

March 21, 2023

Alan Unell Ph.D.

Mar 21, 2023

Healthcare Reform

March 21, 2023

Happy Spring Healthcare Advocates

I am so thankful for all of you and for the actions you take to move us towards a universal healthcare system.

Current State

Here is some good news - The Minnesota House of Representatives voted 68-62 Monday for a bill that would offer legal protections to patients who travel to Minnesota for an abortion and the providers that treat them.

More good news: Mobile clinics that provided covid-19 testing and vaccines at the peak of the pandemic are now being used to provide a range of health services in hard-to-reach communities. A law passed late last year allows qualified health care centers to use federal grants to expand the fleets.

Not so good news: We have spent a lot of time on Maternal Mortality and how it has recently risen. It has especially gone up in states that have restricted abortion and will continue to rise there. This is a horrible devaluing of a woman’s life and we will continue to be a thorn in the side of legislators until the right to choose is restored.

But there are other metrics that show how well a health care system is functioning. One of those is treatable deaths. Treatable (or amenable) deaths "can be mainly avoided through timely and effective health care interventions, including secondary prevention such as screening, and treatment, according to the OECD. They are measured as deaths/100,000 population/year.

According to a 2019 report by the Commonwealth Fund. The answer is not too well. While preventable deaths have declined the US is still far higher than comparable industrialized nations. For example, the report lists the US at 112, Germany at 86, UK at 84, France and Norway at 60 and Switzerland at 54. See also this link.

PNHP reported on a related study that was performed at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington to assess access and quality of care around the globe. They ranked the countries in order of how well their systems performed.

“What we have found about health care access and quality is disturbing,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, senior author of the study and Director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington. “Having a strong economy does not guarantee good health care. Having great medical technology doesn’t either. We know this because people are not getting the care that should be expected for diseases with established treatments.”

The US ranked 81, tied with Estonia and Montenegro, far below all of our industrialized competitor nations, who have universal health care.

About 1% of the US population dies every year. That’s about 3.4 million of us.

According to the CDC here are recent death levels

Heart disease: 695,547
Cancer: 605,213
COVID-19: 416,893
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 224,935
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 162,890
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 142,342
Alzheimer’s disease: 119,399
Diabetes: 103,294

Recent deaths that occurred that were treatable were more than 275,000 and that does not count COVID-19.

This can be fixed by making sure people have access and can use the healthcare system. A Universal Single Payer cradle to grave system like Enhanced Medicare for All can do that. Our elected officials need to hear this over and over and over until they believe we mean it and that their jobs depend on it.

Take Action

Use RESISTBOT

Text SIGN PYTFOW to 50409 to send the message below to your Congressperson and Senators and President Biden.

All of us deserve a healthcare system that works. Not counting COVID-19, yearly, over 275,000 people die in the US from causes that were treatable, if only they had access to the healthcare system. A recent University of Washington, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) study rated US health care far below any of our industrialized competitor nations. You can read it here https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/823133.

You can fix this. Representative Pramila Jayapal will be reintroducing her Universal Health Care Legislation and I want you to support it.