What Might Health Care Reform Have to Do With H1N1?

[Guest guest]

What Might Health Care Reform Have to Do With H1N1?

Terry Leach Posted: October 19, 2009 01:45 PM

In June of 2008, researchers from the Tohoku University School of Medicine in

Tokyo warned, in a report re-published by the CDC, well before the masked and

panic-laden Spring Break of 2009 images from Mexico City emerged, that mortality

rates from a future pandemic would likely be higher in countries where:

* Its citizens lack access to adequate medical care

* Its public health infrastructure is weak

* Conditions, including housing and population density, contribute to spread

of disease

* Host factors exist, including nutritional status and co-existing medical

conditions; and

* Its citizens experienced a high HIV/AIDS prevalence.

The researchers from Japan were profiling the potential impact of the next

influenza pandemic in developing countries, well before H1N1 burst on the scene.

And, in the end, they may be right -- deaths associated with H1N1 will likely be

considerably higher in developing countries than in high-income countries.

But how will the United States fare against other industrialized countries that

offer adequate health care to all of its citizens? Already we are observing

death rates in children and teenagers early in the year. Indeed, as of October

9, we had already seen over 75 deaths in children, a figure that is higher than

the rate typically seen for seasonal flu over an entire season, and winter

hasn't even begun.

And could these heartbreaking deaths, many of them affecting otherwise healthy

children, have been avoided in the United States, still the richest country in

the world?

We must ask our policymakers whether some children died in the U.S. because a)

care was delayed or refused because of cost, there weren't enough providers

to diagnose and treat , c) whether too many of our children have underlying

diseases, including diabetes and asthma, because of health and reimbursement

policies skewed away from prevention and/or chronic disease management and/or d)

our public health infrastructure has been significantly impacted because of

thousands of layoffs in the last two years...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/terry-leach/what-might-health-care-re_b_324802.htm\

l