I Attended My Town Hall On Monday

[thoughtone]

I went to my Town Hall meeting on Monday. The 4th congressional district of Georgia. The former Cynthia McKinney’s district now represented by Hank Johnson. There were a lot of people there. They had to open an over flow area with big screen monitors to accommodate all the people. Well over 1000 people attended. About 30% were anti health care people. I suspect most of the anti health protesters were not even residences of the district. I asked several of the protesters where did they live. They responded “none of your business.” I asked give me a neighborhood or street, they refused. I suspect they were from Cobb county (Newt Gingrich country) or one of rural Atlanta counties.

 

[Lamarr]

Did anyone ask about the 23.7 Trillion?

 

[cthomas0964]

Well I live in that district and I think the Dems are trying to railroad a great idea with a very bad plan. For people that don't have healthcare its going to be good but for the ones that do it will bring down the quality. There are many things that can be done before you try to provided socialized healthcare to people. They did an awful job with Medicade and Medicare so I really don't see how this will be any different.

 

[nittie]

Medical Mistakes Kill 100,000 Americans A Year


The promise every doctor makes is, “Do no harm.” But doctors and hospitals do make mistakes. And the November 30 shocking report from the Institute of Medicine showed medical mistakes are a common and potentially life-threatening risk. If medical mistakes counted among the leading causes of death in America, they would be eighth.

Surgical gaffes like amputating the wrong foot or a deadly chemotherapy overdose make headlines. But patients may never hear of the more subtle errors, like a delay in diagnosis or testing that costs precious time to fight off disease. Medical mistakes costing lives. Medical mistakes are a stunningly huge problem, says a new report by the Institute of Medicine. It quoted studies estimating that at least 44,000 and perhaps as many as 98,000 hospitalized Americans die every year from errors. To put that into sharper and more alarming perspective, even the lower figure of 44,000 deaths exceeds the number of people who die each year either on the highways, of breast cancer or of AIDS.

Heath Ledger’s cause of death was “prescription drug toxicity.” We all know of it because he is famous but what about thousands of others that die from taking prescription drugs. Who is to blame? The prescription drug manufacturers? The FDA for having approved the drugs? OR the consumers for having taken the medicines?

Before we blame anyone for this, let us delve deeper into why this happens. If we take the example of Heath Ledger, he was killed by a deadly combination of OxyContin, a painkiller; Xanax, an antidepressant, Valium, Unisom, Vicodin and Restoril – all FDA-approved pharmaceuticals prescribed legally by doctors.

His is not an isolated case nor is it rare. This problem is far more serious than you could ever imagine; with at least 100,000 Americans dying from FDA-approved medicines each year. This fact is known since the 1960s, with studies revealing that more than 5% of hospitalizations are due to drug toxicity and one of every 20 drugs administered in hospitals results in some adverse reaction, with 10% of the reactions being life-threatening.

And they want to give citizens more access to these people