http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090604/us_nm/us_healthcare_bankruptcy
Medical bills underlie 60 percent of U.S. bankrupts: study
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor
Reuters: June 4, 2009
Washington (Reuters) – Medical bills are behind more than 60 percent of U.S.
personal bankruptcies, U.S. researchers reported on Thursday in a report
they said demonstrates that healthcare reform is on the wrong track.
More than 75 percent of these bankrupt families had health insurance but
still were overwhelmed by their medical debts, the team at Harvard Law
School, Harvard Medical School and Ohio University reported in the American
Journal of Medicine.
"Unless you're Warren Buffett, your family is just one serious illness away
from bankruptcy," Harvard's Dr. David Himmelstein, an advocate for a
single-payer health insurance program for the United States, said in a
statement.
"For middle-class Americans, health insurance offers little protection," he
added.
The United States is embarking on an overhaul of its healthcare system, now
a patchwork of public programs such as Medicare for the elderly and disabled
and employer-sponsored health insurance that leaves 15 percent of the
population with no coverage.
The researchers and some consumer advocates said the study showed the
proposals under the most serious consideration are unlikely to help many
Americans. They are pressing for a so-called single payer plan, in which one
agency, usually the government, coordinates health coverage.
"Expanding private insurance and calling it health reform will fail to
prevent financial catastrophe for hundreds of thousands of Americans every
year," Dr. Sidney Wolfe of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen said
in a statement.
About 170 million people get health insurance through an employer but
President Barack Obama says soaring healthcare costs hurt the economy and
force businesses to drop medical insurance for their workers.
CANCELED COVERAGE
"Nationally, a quarter of firms cancel coverage immediately when an employee
suffers a disabling illness; another quarter do so within a year," the
report reads.
Obama told Congress on Wednesday he was open to making mandatory health
insurance part of the overhaul.
Neither Congress nor Obama are considering the kind of single-payer plan
advocated by Public Citizen, Himmelstein and his colleague Dr. Steffie
Woolhandler.
"We need to rethink health reform," Woolhandler said. "Covering the
uninsured isn't enough.
"Only single-payer national health insurance can make universal,
comprehensive coverage affordable by saving the hundreds of billions we now
waste on insurance overhead and bureaucracy."
The researchers studied 2,134 random families who filed for bankruptcy
between January and April in 2007, before the current recession began.
They used public bankruptcy court records and surveyed 1,032 people by
telephone.
"Using a conservative definition, 62.1 percent of all bankruptcies in 2007
were medical; 92 percent of these medical debtors had medical debts over
$5,000, or 10 percent of pretax family income," the researchers wrote.
"Most medical debtors were well-educated, owned homes and had middle-class
occupations."
The researchers, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said the
share of bankruptcies that could be blamed on medical problems rose by 50
percent from 2001 to 2007.
Patients with multiple sclerosis paid a mean of $34,167 out of pocket in
2007, diabetics paid $26,971, and those with injuries paid $25,096, the
researchers found.
(Editing by Bill Trott and Jackie Frank)
***
http://www.truthout.org/061109B
US-Peru FTA Sparks Indigenous Massacre
by: Tom Loudon,
t r u t h o u t : June 11, 2009
During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations
between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100
people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have
been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon rain
forest.
For almost two months, as many as 30,000 indigenous people have been
blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal of presidential
decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA.
According to the indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly
threaten indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several
times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of
the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into
the region, the people decided it was imperative to "put their bodies in
front of the machines" in order to prevent this equipment from entering
their territory.
On Friday, June 5, the government decided the protests needed to end and
launched an aggressive assault against the people protesting on the road
outside of Bagua. The dislocation was conducted from helicopters and the
ground, with police and army using automatic weapons and heavy equipment
against people armed with only rocks and spears. As videos, photos and
testimonies from the region slowly emerge, it is clear that this was
designed to inflict as many civilian casualties as possible, and deter those
in other regions from continuing protests. Pictures circulating on the
Internet depict snipers in uniform firing at protesters from the streets,
tanks and from on top of buildings. On Saturday, in Lima, Peru's capital, a
large spontaneous demonstration in support of the Amazonian indigenous was
broken up by police.
In the wake of what appears to be a massacre perpetrated by the police,
the government of President Alan Garcia is mounting a massive propaganda
campaign, claiming that indigenous protesters attacked the police, and
accusing them of being terrorists. Human rights lawyers have accused Peru's
government of a cover-up, and have been impeded from getting in to
investigate more fully. The Bishop's Vicariate for the Environment for Jaen,
Nicanor Alvarado, said "The main problem is that injured and deceased
civilians are being transferred to the "El Milagro" military base ... so,
it's possible that a group of injured and deceased people are disappeared
later on."
Credible accusations are emerging that the police are systematically
disappearing civilian bodies by burning or throwing then in rivers. Right
now, people in the region are preparing lists of those missing to document
the large number of civilians disappeared. Amnesty International has issued
a warning expressing concern for the scores of demonstrators who were
detained last weekend.
The head of Peru's Justice Ministry issued a warrant for the arrest of
Alberto Pizango on sedition charges. Pizango is president of AIDESEP, the
main indigenous organization involved in the protests. Pizango has taken
refuge in the Nicaraguan Embassy and it appears that Nicaragua will grant
him asylum. Arrest warrants have been issued for several other leaders as
well.
The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues issued an urgent call to the
government of Peru, demanding that the violence against the indigenous
people cease, that medical attention be made available to the wounded and
that the Peruvian government abide by its international obligations
regarding the protection of all human rights, especially the people's right
to life and security.
The tragic violence currently unleashed in the Peruvian Amazon is
directly linked to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between the US and Peru.
On Sunday, interviewed at one of the many roadblocks set up by the
demonstrators, indigenous leader and protester Luis Huansi stated, "We will
not give up until they reverse the laws that damage us. They want to take
away our lands and forests and make our traditions disappear."
Indigenous leaders promise that the protests will not end with this
latest violence from the government. There have already been calls for
international tribunals to investigate and, if their findings so indicate,
to hold the government responsible for this massacre.
On June 8, Minister Carmen Vildoso, the Women's Issues and Social
Development minister, announced her resignation in protest of the
government's response. There is building pressure for the resignation of
Cabinet Chief Yehude Simon and Interior Minister Mercedes Cabanillas.
Although President Garcia has stated that he will not backpedal,
international pressure is growing for the actions of the police and military
to be brought to light.
A national strike has been called in Peru for June 11 by the newly
formed "National Front for Life and Sovereignty," which includes a broad
spectrum of Peruvian national organizations. Protests in solidarity have
happened in many parts of the world, and people will be watching closely for
how the Peruvian government responds to the strike.
For more news and information on what is happening in Peru, visit:
http://art-us.org/ or http://peruanista.blogspot.com/.
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