The Latina who died in the ER, Edith Rodriguez, writhing in pain, on the floor of LA's King hospital blood, was not only killed by the heartless inaction of the doctors, nurses and staff on duty there.
An LA spokesman said that "even the janitors doing an elegant job of cleaning up the vomit did nothing to help her."
Rodriguez was also killed by America's failure to enact universal health care via single payer.
She would not have died in any of the first world countries that have universal health care.
Why are the lamestream media failing to recognize this?
One can only guess that she was turned away for one reason-- lack of insurance.
The news networks are playing the tapes of the 911 dispatchers rejecting calls for emergency help. They should be following up on the recordings with commentary on the failure of the health care system. Instead, they are reporting that ERs don't have enough money. Blame that on the health care system too. That's a health care system that starves the health care providers too.
A toxicologist on CNN comments, "The problem here is the bureaucracy and the administration may have prevented her from getting care.But also, if she'd have gotten help sooner, she would never have gotten to this point."
The CNN reporter, minimizing the issue, comments, "We could go and on about the insurance, and all of these things..."
You see, universal health care is not only not sexy, it's tied to Hillary and her failure to pass it back in the early nineties. Keep in mind that she failed because the for-profit health insurers spent millions running advertisements preying on citizen fears.
Edith Rodriguez is a highly visible case. But there are an estimated tens of thousands of people who die because they don't have health insurance. Compare that to the victims of 9-11 or the 3500 troops who were killed in Iraq. These victims were killed to-- by lobbyists, politicians and health insurance corporations. Where is the outcry. And for Edith Rodriguez, let's be sure that the right people and entities are accused.
A strong majority of Americans WANT universal, single payer health care.
Opponents cite how the Canadian health care system makes people wait. They don't mention that Canadians live three years longer. It's worth the wait. We need to put pressure on our legislators-- at state and national levels-- to pass laws making Universal health care happen now.
Legislators failure to respond to this desperate need, affecting close to 50 million Americans, are contributing to the problem, accessories to murder, in cases like Edith Rodriquez and the tens of thousands of others who die and the hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions whose health is not what it could be if they had health care.
Yes, calling them accessories to murder is severe. If the shoe fits, wear it.
