Honor our veterans
By
leslie ⋅ November 11, 2009
⋅ On Veterans Day, we need to honor those who have served their country. Even in peacetime, serving in the military is a sacrifice — low pay, a lack of control over one’s own life — so most patriotic Americans would agree that they deserve the best ew have to offer.
Until this last generation, veterans’ benefits included lifelong medical care. That’s not so anymore; the care is needs-based now.
So, the latest Harvard Medical School study should anger any American who has any respect for veterans:
According to the study, 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year as a result of not having health insurance. Researchers emphasize that “that figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.”
The 1.46 million working-age veterans that did not have health insurance last year all experienced reduced access to care as a consequence, leading to “six preventable deaths a day.”
“Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people — too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at Harvard Medical School. [...]
Let’s say we honor our veterans by supporting the members of Congress who voted for health care reform. Let’s honor then by standing up to the big insurance companies, big pharma and their lobbyists, and passing real health care reform that will give all Americans the care they need.
Help Life o' Mike
We need your help now more than ever. Your tax-deductible donation will help us get Patient Pals and Family Friends off the ground. Please consider a gift in honor or in memory of a loved one.
Patient Pals & Family Friends volunteer training
Our Feb. 27 training had to be postponed, but we have rescheduled. Join us 9 days, as we train our next group of volunteers for Patient Pals & Family Friends. The four-hour training will run 10 a.m.-2 p.m. and will include lunch. Patient Pals are people who have experience with an illness or disability. After training, they will be paired with someone who is newly diagnosed or disabled. Family Friends will be volunteers who are paired with family members of people who are ill or disabled, and will have been through the expeience of having a loved one with illness or disability. In Loving Memory
Life o' Mike has participated two memorial services to remember those who have died from our broken health care system, one in Asheville and one in Raleigh.
If you would like to organize more of these services, please contact lifeomike@gmail.com and we will help put it together.
The services include stories, prayers and information on how people of faith can make a difference.
About 45,000 people die each year because they don’t have health insurance, according to a recent study by Harvard Medical School and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. That breaks down to one American every 12 minutes.
Those people can be honored in the service by a bell chime and a moment of silence every 12 minutes in the service.
For more information, call Leslie Boyd at 828-243-6712.
Contact your representatives
Ask them what they're doing to fix health care!
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