You may have seen the report being published in the current, Health Policy, that the US has the most preventable deaths of any 1st world country. At 84,000 per year, I think the number is probably much too low because so many others are incorrectly categorized and the effects of recent skyrocketing deductibles can not yet be measured. To understand this issue, it's important to look at "barriers to medical care" which you can study in the literature.
Now that full coverage insurance plans, dishonestly re-branded as Cadillac plans, will be banned by the plutocracy; you can expect the rates of preventable deaths to increase especially in the lower middle classes.
Public sector union workers sacrificed for decades to obtain full coverage health plans. And small business owners and individuals paying high premiums, "doing the right thing," while healthy, are also losing access to full coverage health insurance.
Most of the working poor can not afford $5000 deductibles, and most of them do not have paid sick leave either. These folks are forced to skip medical care, even when they have lousy health insurance. So subsidized junk insurance with huge deductibles will not bring one bit of improved access to medical care to this population, which is one of the great deceptions of the so called health care reform. In fact, many who might have been able to afford a single medical visit, when having an acute medical problem, will instead pay that money in health insurance premiums making their access even worse.
As millions more in the lower middle classes(especially union workers) are required to pay whatever unknown and confusing bills as out of pocket expenses, they too will begin skipping important medical testing or intervention, which will cause more of them to die and suffer from preventable causes. Just like medical bankruptcies, many of these preventable deaths will be people with American style junk insurance products.
There are many potential overlapping barriers to accessing any type of treatment. Wall St. health reformers have deliberately tried to confuse the American people about the difference between accessing medical care and obtaining junk health insurance. They have falsely tried to equate the two. If you talk to the working poor as I have, you will understand that the skyrocketing deductibles, justified by lies about over consumption of medical services, often present the most fundamental barrier that prevents necessary medical visits. Lack of sick leave would be another big barrier. (I have known too many people who suffered and died needlessly because of barriers to health care!)
It was extremely dishonest of Wall St. and their political servants to mislead you to believe that subsidized high deductible junk insurance was the same as improving access to preventive medical care. This is why those of us who have studied barriers to medical care, immediately knew that the ACA would never deliver improved access to care for the working poor, as the lies led you to believe. This "welfare" that Republicans scream about is fake. The ACA is welfare for insurance and pharmaceutical corporations!
Why do Americans continue to find hope and euphoria in the despicable lies by Wall St. and their servants????? Medicare for all would give us all stress free full coverage, and greatly improved medical outcomes, at a much much cheaper price for all of society!
Trying to shine light through the lies,
Glenn
