So Where's The Outrage?

For years and years there has been a low grade howling that occasionally peaks at an ear shattering crescendo over gun control. It's like clockwork.

There is a new study that just came out that shows medical malpractice deaths dwarf gun deaths, automobile deaths and accidental deaths, combined.

This new study shows that the problem is so rampant that they estimate it to be the third leading cause of death in America trailing only heart disease and all cancers combined.

In 2010, the Office of Inspector General for Health and Human Services said that bad hospital care contributed to the deaths of 180,000 patients in Medicare alone in a given year.

Now comes a study in the current issue of the Journal of Patient Safety that says the numbers may be much higher — between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year who go to the hospital for care suffer some type of preventable harm that contributes to their death, the study says.

That would make medical errors the third-leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease, which is the first, and cancer, which is second.

What kind of outrage do we hear about this?

Crickets.


It seems medical malpractice isn't so messy and visually in your face.

It's nice and tidy.

My father almost kicked the bucket recently because a new doctor he was seeing prescribed him a new heart medication that built up in his body and started poisoning him.

He was in the hospital for two weeks and had multiple "heart episodes" which is hospital speak for heart attack.
The medicine burned his lungs chemically. This was misdiagnosed as pneumonia at one point and he kept taking the medicine until it finally put him in the hospital.
His regular doctor finally figured out what the problem was but not before it damn near killed him.


This is just one example of the now estimated Half A Million People A Year that die because of medical malpractice yet you do not see angry mothers on the television demanding action, do you?

This country has it's priorities fucked up and it is the media and special interests who are fanning the hysteria.

I expect we will see more about this issue in the near future though.