Dead Babies

Q: What does Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and the United States have in common?

A: 1 in 200 new born babies die.

Yes that's right folks. In a report published Monday America managed to come 32nd out of 33 industrialized nations for baby death statistics. The only country we managed to beat was Latvia. And if those figures are not embarrassing enough the figure among the black community was 9/1,000 - closer to third world countries figures.

According to the report the ridiculous disparity between rich and poor, short maternity leave, and a lack of universal health care pushed the infant mortality rate to an embarrassingly high level. The richest country in the world, that spends double what most European countries spend per capita on health care, only achieves these horrendous results.

Time and again we see the Christian Right banging on about the evils of abortion, yet when it comes to saving the lives of babies, no one seems to care. Just how many of these reports have to be published before America wakes up and realizes that the insurance companies and medical companies are raping the American people? How is it that European countries spend half what we spend and yet manage to achieve better results? Where is all this money going? Why are we allowing ourselves to be so royally screwed?

The American health care system is sick. It is being pillaged by greedy corporations who care only about the dollar and how many of these dollars they can bleed from the system. Americans are paying way too much and getting far too little. 45,000,000 Americans have no medical insurance and therefore only a limited access to proper health care. Surely we deserve better than this?

0.5% of all babies die in the United States. That's one in every 200 births. These babies are dying because we choose not to provide affordable quality health care to every American. How can we stand by and let this happen? How can we accept that as Americans we don't deserve proper health care?

The system is corrupt and wrong. The system needs to change. In America everyone should have the right to quality health care; it's that simple.