Maybe this is where the fly came from?

Quote:Our current private health insurance system is the most costly, wasteful, complicated, and bureaucratic in the world. But in America, the people who have to navigate that maze are the lucky ones. Today, 46 million people have no health insurance and even more are underinsured with high deductibles and co-payments. At a time when 60 million people, including many with insurance, do not have access to a medical home base, more than 18,000 Americans die every year from preventable illnesses. That is six times the number who died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

18,000 out of 300million, that translates to 0.006% not an alarming number.

Quote:Despite the fact that we spend almost twice as much per person on healthcare as any other country, our healthcare outcomes lag behind many other nations. According to the World Health Organization, the United States ranks 37th in terms of health system performance and we are far behind many other countries in terms of such important indices as infant mortality, life expectancy, and preventable deaths.

Let's examine two key points in his rant.

INFANT MORTALITY, the US reports infant mortality on all babies that take one breath. Many European countries don't count as live birth, babies that don't survive who are under 30 centimeters and/or 2.5 kilograms.

LIFE EXPECTANCY The World Health Organization includes in the life expectancy, number of deaths from auto accidents and homicides both of which are higher in the US than most other industrial nations. No amount of insurance will eliminate deaths from those causes.

Quote:To me, the evidence is overwhelming that we must end the private insurance company domination of healthcare in our country and move toward a publicly funded, single-payer, Medicare-for-all approach.

Anyone who has a relative on Medicare can tell you how "great" that program is.

The private health industry's time is up

How many of these 18,000 are from heart disease, COPD, etc. brought on from smoking? Do these count as "preventable disease"? They should.