Crisis in America’s ERs

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Whenever people talk about instituting a national health care system to the United States, opponents cry foul and fret about “waiting lists” and the like. Well, as it turns out, the health care system in France—which allows people to purchase private health care on top of a universal public insurance system—has no waiting lists. Neither does Germany, another national health care system. On the other hand, we certainly have waiting lists here in the United States:

Emergency medical care in the United States is on the verge of collapse, with the nation’s declining number of emergency rooms dangerously overcrowded and often unable to provide the expertise needed to treat seriously ill people in a safe and efficient manner.

That’s the grim conclusion of three reports released yesterday by the Institute of Medicine, the product of an extensive two-year look at emergency care.

Long waits for treatment are epidemic, the reports said, with ambulances sometimes idling for hours to unload patients. Once in the ER, patients sometimes wait up to two days to be admitted to a hospital bed.

This despite the fact that the United States pays more for health care than any other country in the world. (In fact, per capita the U.S. government alone spends more on public health care than countries with supposedly “socialized” systems—and that’s before all the private spending is included.) And yet the U.S. still endures waiting lists and rationing—not to mention the 46 million people who don’t have insurance at all.

In fact, the large number of uninsured people in this country contributes heavily to the hospital crisis—since the uninsured often can’t afford preventive care, they tend to wait until problems get really bad and require hospitalization, which then puts a burden on the emergency medical care system. (By law, emergency rooms must at the very least evaluate and stabilize everyone who comes in.) But for some reason we’re told we shouldn’t change anything. Right.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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