Friday, August 14, 2009

Genocide in America




Please click on the graph for a clearer picture.





What is a genocide? Usually the matter is related to an ethnic conflict with active use of force by one group against another. According to the definitions in international law, however, a genocide can also be perpetrated by denying a group of people access to adequate living conditions, causing large-scale loss of life. Factors that decide these living conditions are obviously things like food, shelter, access to clean water, medicine and health care.


Contrary to what the debate in the American media would have you think, the issue known as “America’s health care crisis” is not merely some actuarial difficulty causing inflated prices;


Literally hundreds of thousands of Americans are dying because they are do not have access to health care.


A widely published and cited figure is one that states that between 20,000 and 30,000 Americans die every year because they don’t have access to health care. Indeed, both domestic and international studies repeatedly confirm that the number is in this range. A well-known study on this subject came out from “The Urban Institute” in 2008:


http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411588_uninsured_dying.pdf


Studies such as this one are usually debated ad nauseam for their methodology (read about the exact methodology in the study by clicking on the link), but the basic premise is this: the study estimates how many uninsured Americans died because they received too little treatment or treatment too late as a direct result of not being insured.


Based on the numbers in this study, I have projected the estimated number of Americans that will have died from uninsurance when this decade is over. The average yearly increase of deaths is around 5%, but if anything, one would expect that number to be higher in the next 2 years.


Please take a look at the graph in the beginning of the article.


The numbers are simply staggering, and to say the least, frightening.


The number of Americans that can be expected to have died by the end of this decade as a direct result of not being insured is 287,000!


The death of close to 300,000 people must surely qualify as a genocide if something is intentionally behind it.


It has been suggested by some people on the right wing that a lot of people who don’t have health insurance are in this situation because they choose to take the risk of not buying insurance. We all know that this theory is pure garbage. I think it’s safe to say that people in general try to strive for a shot at surviving cancer. In other words, everybody wants health insurance.


So what is behind the lack of health insurance among almost 50 Million Americans? Since the days of Theodore Roosevelt, attempts at covering the uninsured have been made, and have failed every time. Every time it’s the same thing: the people who stand to gain from the continuation of the current system fiercely fight and prevent the uninsured from becoming insured through extortion, threats and lies.


These people are currently engaging in, and perpetuating, a genocide on the poorer elements of American society, commensurate with definitions of genocide from the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide” from 1948.


The lobbyists and extortioners should be brought to justice and charged with genocide. By the end of this decade, they will have the blood of close to 300,000 Americans on their hands.






Moreover, I advise that the winner-takes-all voting system should be destroyed.