Here's a few questions for the media to ask on Wednesday, after they complete the basic information about the shooter.
- How many of the injured have health insurance?
- How many have supplemental insurance to pay for recovery not covered by insurance?
- How many of the people will lose their jobs and their health insurance because of their injuries?
- If the Graham Cassidy bill had passed, would the people shot be denied new health insurance because they would now have a pre-existing condition?
- Under the ACA, insurance companies can not deny people health insurance if they have a pre-existing condition.
The costs of gun violence go way beyond the emergency room costs and hospitalization.
Hospital expenses for 100,000 shot annually reach $2.8 billion
More than 100,000 people are shot each year in the US at a total cost of $2.8 billion in hospital expenses, a study published on Monday has found. If lost wages and hospital expenses are considered together, the authors said, the annual cost of shootings in the US could be as high as $45 billion. - Jessica Glenza @JessicaGlenza The Guardian
Report: "Previous studies just focused on the mortality, but ignored the larger chunk of people who don’t die but are affected by this issue."
And private insurance only picks up a fraction of the tab.
More than two thirds of gunshot victims admitted to American hospitals are covered by Medicaid, or don’t have health insurance at all.
--Kate Masters, The Trace @teamtrace
These findings anchor one of the most comprehensive studies of the cost of gunshot hospitalization in the United States to date, an examination of 336,785 hospital admissions by public-health researchers at the University of Iowa, published in the July edition of the journal Injury Epidemiology.
I read the study and the price of that care is staggering:
"The average annual cost per admission for a firearm assault injury is $20,989, more than twice that of a typical hospital stay."
BUT, as big as that number is, it does NOT include the cost of the emergency room visit! I don't know about you, but when I'm shot, on 21st century Earth in the United States I go to the emergency room.
Yes they will treat me, but if I need follow up I'm in trouble because they don't take quatloos.
I'm used to the civilized policy of Starfleet, where the only "cost" of treatment is having to deal with emotional humans in sick bay.
I wish I could skip ahead in this timeline to when universal health care comes to the US. I was in the WWII one where you defeated the fascists in WWII.
I just hope I'm not in your darkest timeline, the one where Americans elected an incompetent fascist ruler whose ego leads you to global climate collapse and then World War III. That's neither the live long nor prosper timeline.
