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The Real baby killers
Author: TriSec    Date: 03/27/2010 13:30:59

Suppose you're out for a walk one fine afternoon. Suddenly, You notice your breathing is becoming difficult. The harder you work at getting air in, the less it seems to work. You begin to panic.

Imagine you have a coffee stirrer straw, how thin it is. Now imagine you are under water and that is your air hose. It's just not enough air.

The longer this problem lasts, the more excited you become which makes your dilemma worse.

If you have your rescue inhalor (breather drugs) you can't breathe in well enough to actually get the medication into your system. Now you really, truly think you are going to die.

Others around you panic also. You can't speak but in 2-3 word sentences to tell them what is wrong or what to do to help you. You are drowning in a sea of air; it is all around you but can't get enough of it into your lungs to live.



There's a couple of simple drugs out on the market that help to prevent the above from happening. One is called Flovent. It's about $110 for a 30-day supply. There is also one called Symbacort, but that's over $200 a month. This is just to control the disease.

In case you get into trouble, there's the 'rescue drug', which dilates your bronchial tubes so you can breathe again. That one is called albuterol, and that's about $45 for a 30 day supply.

Simple things that you'd ordinarily not bat an eyelash at buying in order to keep your kids alive, right?

What if you're out of work, it's January, you just paid the rent, and you only have $200 to split between heat, food, and drugs? What do you pick?

About 5,000 children per year die from this in the United States...each and every year.

This is just ONE childhood disease that can be prevented by daily administration of drugs. Drugs that would be covered by most health insurance plans. Unless, of course, they deny the coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

Of course, we all know that won't be happening anymore, thanks to the recently-passed bill.



But of course, you can't use reason on Republicans; it all came down to abortion, as we've seen in the past few days. "Baby Killer!" has become their mantra.

But who are the real baby killers? Is it the abortion doctors that work with their patients in resolving what is almost always a difficult situation? I don't understand the religious right a whit on this. They fight, and scream, and insult, and yes TERRORIZE....to protect the unborn. When a child is already alive, they couldn't care less.

Take a look at these statistics.

Shouldn't we all be shocked to learn that the United States ranks 33rd or 46th in child mortality, depending on the statistical method used? And places like Cuba, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic rank higher than us? But what about abortion? The be-all and end-all of Republican opposition to any kind of meaningful reform? Well...the abortion rate in the US continues to decline.


In 2005, the U.S. abortion rate declined to 19.4 abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44, continuing the downward trend that started after the abortion rate peaked at 29.3 in 1981, according to a new Guttmacher Institute census of U.S. abortion providers. The abortion rate is now at its lowest level since 1974. The number of abortions declined as well, to a total of 1.2 million in 2005, 25% below the all-time high of 1.6 million abortions in 1990.

Despite these declines, slightly more than one in five pregnancies ended in abortion in 2005, an indicator of how much still needs to be done to help women and their partners avoid unintended pregnancy. “Our policymakers at the state and federal levels need to understand that behind virtually every abortion is an unintended pregnancy, so we must redouble our efforts towards prevention, through better access to contraception,” says Sharon L. Camp, president and CEO of the Guttmacher Institute.



So bear with me while I try to extrapolate the data.

According to the childhood mortality table referenced earlier, the lower rate per thousand in the US is 7.8 deaths per 1,000 live births. There are about 4.1 million live births in the US in 2005, the last year data was available. So that works out to about 31,980 deaths in the US in 2005 from preventable diseases.

That was just five years ago. So since 2005, I'd guess that's about 160,000 children that have died in the US due to Republican inaction and obstructionism.

it's about the same total as if Springfield, MA were simply wiped off the map and every man, woman and child therein had never existed.

Who are the baby killers again?




 

5 comments (Latest Comment: 03/28/2010 01:29:51 by velveeta jones)
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