[Vision2020] killer editorial

[Donovan Arnold]

"Then explain why the United States is  practically a Third World country when it comes to infant mortality.  Nearly five babies per 1,000 in this country never make it past infancy.
  Among industrialized nations, only Latvia has a higher infant mortality rate."
  
  
    I have no doubt that there are inequalities among peoples in the United States based on race. 
  
  However, I believe it is important to point out that most third world  countries do not have a the resources to record all of their infant  mortality rates as accurately as a wealthy nation like the US. 
  
  There is also no universal standard for  defining and recording infant mortality.
  
  I  am not saying that is the entire reason for the similarities in  numbers. However, I am willing to bet that it does have something to do  with those numbers. Also, there is great incentives for third world  countries to have strict standards of recording something as infant  mortality as they depend heavily on tourist dollars and few people want  to visit a country with a high death rate of any kind, especially if  they have children.
  
  
  Nonetheless,  there is NO REASON why the most powerful and wealthiest nation on Earth  is not providing quality and affordable health care to its citizens.  The Philippines for example, an extremely poor nations, yet has  comparable health care to the US. Our medical system is full of greed,  corruption, fraud, and is not based on a system of doing what is best  for the people it is suppose to be taking care of. 
  
  
  
  _DJA
       
  

Bill London <london at moscow.com> wrote:              I  was very impressed (as I often am) by Tom Henderson's editorial this  morning in the Tribune -- especially his summary last paragraph ...see  below....BL
   
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    T.H. - For too many, America is a Third World country
  Tom Henderson  Ever wonder why bleeding hearts carp   about the disadvantaged, about the inequities of race and culture?   
After  all, America is the land of opportunity. If the so-called  "disadvantaged" just pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps,  they'd have the same chance every upper-middle-class white kid has for  a comfortable life. 
Their chances might even be better -- given all those quotas and hiring   preferences.   
Sure.   
Then  explain why the United States is practically a Third World country when  it comes to infant mortality. Nearly five babies per 1,000 in this  country never make it past infancy. 
Among industrialized nations, only Latvia has a higher infant mortality rate.     
We  may all be equal in this country. But as the saying goes, some of us  are more equal than others. Behind America's delusions about upward  mobility lies a giant chasm between the haves and have-nots. 
Many  of the have-nots have brown skin. Among America's black population, the  infant mortality rate is nine deaths per 1,000 -- closer to rates in  the Third World than to those among industrialized nations. 
That's  not because black people refuse to better themselves. It's because the  people holding the purse strings either refuse to acknowledge the  continuing inequities of race and class in American life -- or they  just plain, flat don't give a damn. 
They  would rather imagine a Culture of Victimhood, where the downtrodden  have only themselves to blame because they whine too much or have low  self-esteem. 
How convenient.   
To  acknowledge the problem would mean accepting the responsibility to  actually do something about it -- like improving access to health care.  
And that would mean  recognizing -- along with practically every other industrialized nation  on the planet -- that health care is a right, not a privilege. 
''Our  health care system focuses on providing high-tech services for  complicated cases. We do this very well," says Kenneth Thorpe, a health  policy expert at Emory University. 
''What  we do not do is provide basic primary and preventive health care  services. We do not pay for these services and do not have a delivery  system that is designed to provide primary prevention." 
Do  we truly have equal opportunity in this country? Or does it just seem  that way when you live too far above the street to hear other people's  babies cry? -- T.H. 

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