HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE
CHRISTMAS!
GUN VIOLENCE IS A U.S. PUBLIC HEALTH
ISSUE:
In Canada we have a Public Health System but in the U.S. as we know
do not so U.S. taxpayers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year
to care for the victims of gun violence, according to a report from the Urban
Institute released Friday.
About 80 percent of the cost of treating
victims of gun violence in 2010 to today is borne in part by taxpayers,
according to an analysis of hospital and insurance data by researchers at the
nonpartisan think tank.
That means taxpayers paid for victims' care either
through government programs like Medicaid or through publicly-funded programs
that subsidize hospital care for those who don't have insurance and can’t afford
to pay.
Hospitals in the U.S. spent $630 million in 2010 treating the
victims of gun violence, everything from minor gunshot wounds to injuries that
required days-long stays and public funds provided most of that money. The
Medicaid costs of gun violence alone that year amounted to approximately $327
million.
Since 2010 It costs over $2 billion a year in hospital charges to
treat victims of firearms-related injuries. This was the major finding of a
study released today at the annual meeting of the American Public Health
Association (APHA).
The high figure underlines the need to treat gun
violence in the U.S. as a Public Health Issue as well as a law enforcement
challenge, according to physicians and advocacy groups contacted by The Crime
Report.
“We are talking about huge numbers of people being hurt every
year,” said Dr. Eric Fleegler, an emergency pediatric physician at Boston
Children’s Hospital who has published extensive research on firearm injuries and
mortality.
“These are not just payment problems for an individual but
also an incredible burden on our healthcare system."
Others asked by The
Crime Report for comment on the study, said concern about rising health care
costs, combined with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, has created
an opportunity for transforming the nation’s approach to gun
violence.
According to the APHA study, one out of every three patients
hospitalized for gun injuries was uninsured.
Between 2000 and 2010,
275,939 individuals were victims of gunfire in the U.S., and received 1.7
million days of hospital charges which only included costs after the patient was
admitted, according to the APHA study. The study does not cover emergency room
costs, which is different than hospital charges, the total cost over the decade
amounted to more than $18.9 billion.
The average cost of medical treatment
for each hospitalization was $75,884.
Approximately 31,000 people die
each year from gun-related injuries, according to the Centers for Disease
Control.
“This study has shown (that) despite a lot of policy and programs in
past decade nothing has changed for the group most likely to be injured by
firearms,” said Dr. Allareddy, who is also a physician at a Level 1 Trauma
Center, which provides the highest level of surgical care to trauma
patients.
The figures show why gun violence needs to be approached from a
public health standpoint; said Robyn Thomas, Executive Director of the San
Francisco-based Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
Recently, the San
Francisco advocacy group and the National Physicians Alliance released “Gun
Safety & Public Health,” a set of guidelines and policy recommendations
describing the public health approach to reducing gun violence.
Recommendations included training doctors in gun safety issues as part
of their professional training, so they can engage in discussions with patients
about precautions such as properly storing firearms away from the reach of
children.
The report noted that such training falls within the tradition
of involving the medical community in public health crises as champions of
injury prevention policies.
The Center will convene a meeting of experts
this month in San Francisco, who have been involved in previous public health
campaigns on issues such as motor vehicle safety, smoking and climate change in
the hopes of using these earlier campaigns as a model the medical community can
use for preventing gun violence.
Thomas called on the American Medical
Association to take a more high profile role on the issue of gun
violence.
“If doctors truly could understand the impact of the problem to the
health care system, it could change everything,” she said.
Some other
research findings from the APHA study:
89 percent of firearm injury patients
treated in hospitals were male and more than half (48 percent) were African
American.
Over 60 percent of the injuries were caused by handgun
“assault;”
22 percent of the injuries were listed as accidental;
8 percent
were self-inflicted;
Almost 40 percent of patients were aged 20-30.
Adding more context to the issue of rising costs, a recent report by
The Urban Institute, a non-partisan think tank, found that over 80 percent of
gun violence costs are paid for by taxpayers through Medicaid or other
public-funded programs that subsidize hospital care.
Benjamin Hayes,
former chief of the law enforcement branch at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms’ National Tracing Center, said it’s important for the law enforcement
community to see health professionals as allies in curbing gun
violence.
“Most people don’t associate medical costs with gunshots,” said
Hayes. From Jan 2015 to date 2015, 355 mass shootings have taken place.
http://shootingtracker.com/wiki/Mass_Shootings_in_2015
Since the Vietnam War, about 67,000 Americans have died in combat.
In that same time frame, about 1.5 million have died in the US after
being shot by a gun.
Gun deaths in this country are just as common as car crashes. Guns
kill more people than AIDS, war, illegal drug overdoses, and terrorism combined.
And when you look back over the entire history of the country stretching back to
the Revolutionary War you learn that guns have killed more Americans than all
the wars we've fought in combined.
About 1.17 million people have died in combat since the founding of
the US. About 1.49 million have died of a gunshot since Bobby Kennedy was shot
and killed in 1968, which is about as far back as we could find good data.
The two World Wars and the Civil War were devastating. More than 400,000 Americans died in world War Two, but in the past
47 years, guns have killed more people than every war going back to the
Revolutionary War, when battles were fought with muskets and the Second
Amendment didn't exist!
During the Obama administration alone, guns have killed more
Americans than World War One did. Most of these gun deaths are suicides. followed by
homicides and then accidental deaths. There are about 11,000 firearm homicides
each year, which is a big chunk of the approximately 33,000 annual gun deaths in
the US.
SO PLEASE PRAY FOR AN END TO ALL GUN VIOLENCE EVERY
WHERE!
AS ONE DAY AS PROMISED BY GOD, MANKIND WILL KNOW PEACE!
HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND “GOD BLESS US, EVERY ONE!”
AMEN.
A IMO from Sir Richard…
