If America's So Great, Where's Our Health Care?

By Sarah Ruth van Gelder and Doug Pibel, YES! Magazine. Posted September 23, 2006.

The rest of the industrialized world gets universal health care. The U.S. gets limited access at a far higher cost. It's time for Americans to get the health care system they want, and the savings that go with it.

For Joel Segal, it was the day he was kicked out of George Washington Hospital, still on an IV after knee surgery, without insurance, and with $100,000 in medical debt. For Kiki Peppard, it was having to postpone needed surgery until she could find a job with insurance -- it took her two years. People all over the United States are waking up to the fact that our system of providing health care is a disaster.

An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured. The uninsured are excluded from services, charged more for services, and die when medical care could save them -- an estimated 18,000 die each year because they lack medical coverage.