On November 4, 2013 Senator Landrieu asked for permission to address the United States Senate reagrding the urgent need to fix the Affordable Care Act.
“We debated for a long time about how to provide a market-based approach to insurance. No nation in the world has attempted this. This is a big effort, but it is an important effort because we are a developed nation. We need to have a healthy workforce. It is about as simple as that. We can’t be No. 1 in the world and we can’t be the strongest economic power in the world if our people are sick and weak. It is as simple as that.”
“We can’t be the strongest economic power in the world if our health care system is sapping so much money out of our economic power–19 percent of the GDP, when Japan is 8 percent. We can’t expect to beat Japan in economics if we are paying almost twice as much for health care and getting less results”, said Senator Landrieu (source: Congressional Record http://thomas.loc.gov).
The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990, ranks it 50th among 221 nations, and 27th out of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, down from 20th in 1990. Of 17 high-income countries studied by the National Institutes of Health in 2013, the United States had the highest or near-highest prevalence of infant mortality , heart and lung disease, sexually transmitted infections, adolescent pregnancies, injuries, homicides, and disability.
Together, such issues place the U.S. at the bottom of the list for life expectancy in the world. Pathetic!
See video: Lack of Health Insurance care in US http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsJJDL3yS74
A 2004 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report said: “The United States is among the few industrialized nations in the world that does not guarantee access to health care for its population.”
A 2013 study found that about 25% of all senior citizens declare “bankruptcy due to medical expenses”, and 43% are forced to mortgage or sell their primary residence (source: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-012-2199-x).
Unmentioned in all this is the profound greed of the insurance companies who add no value to the healthcare system in America.
See related video: Insurance executive tells the truth http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDHklw6PV3U