My mother, who has leukemia and depends on visits to the hospital infusion center for blood transfusions, was told yesterday that the center is closing as of next Friday. The hospital recently expanded, adding a huge emergency room and maternity center, but they claim they can no longer afford to keep the infusion center open.
My mother has Medicare and a great supplemental insurance policy and her transfusions are paid for, but too many people without health insurance are coming to the emergency room, where they can't be turned away, and too many people are suffering from this terrible economy and cannot pay their hospital bills. And so, the hospital has decided to no longer pay for infusion nurses and is shutting down the center that not only provides blood tranfusions, but also chemotherapy to hundreds of patients.
To my knowledge, there is no other infusion center in this area.
So my mother, who cannot travel long distances and who must be close to my father who is disabled, will die sooner than she might have with proper care at an infusion center.
Thank you, Republicans. You are responsible for this.
You have been adamantly against health coverage for all, causing hospitals to lose money when they treat the uninsured. The moron in the White House said people without health insurance still have health care - all they have to do is go to the emergency room. What the moron didn't say is that these people often don't pay their emergency room bills, causing financial hardship to the hospitals who must pay for staff salaries and medical supplies regardless, which then causes them to cut back on other services or even close.
You have also been idiotic advocates of a failed economic policy which, rather than causing wealth to "trickle down," has caused a wasteland of poverty and job loss and bank failures and stock market collapse. This, too, affects a hospital's ability to remain financially solvent.
So, in addition to increasing poverty, enriching the top 1% of the population, depriving Americans of health insurance, waging immoral wars, and ruining the economy with an ideology that even Alan Greenspan now says was flawed (if you had listened to us you would have seen it coming, but you are such arrogant, ignorant lemmings that you refused to listen), you are also killing people.
Congratulations!
You have not even begun to see my rage.
