New Health Department Study Quantifies the Injustice of Poverty
April 28, 2008 9:22 AM
A child born into poverty today in the flats can expect to die 15 years before a child born to wealthier parents.
The child born in the flats is seven times more likely to be born into poverty. This child from the flats will be 5.6 times more likely to drop out of school. As an adult, the child born in the flats will be five times more likely to be hospitalized for diabetes, twice as likely to die of heart disease, three times more likely to die of stroke, and twice as likely to die of cancer.
There are many reasons for these dangerous and ultimately deadly outcomes - but the most tragic part of all of this is that there are simple and cost-effective solutions.
That's why we can't wait for change anymore. Our health and education and environmental policies are literally killing people.
We can start with a simple and cost effective step: basic primary health care for every Californian. The facts are in, and it costs less to keep people healthy than it does to treat them in our emergency rooms once they become seriously ill.
Across the Bay, the City of San Francisco is already enrolling residents into a program of basic health care at very low cost (a cost they are expected to more than recover in savings from keeping people well). We need to take a program like this and deliver it to all Californians, right now.
People are dying. Our friends and neighbors, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers are dying. And they could live, healthy and safe, if only we had the will to make change.
We all need to do our part - that's why I am running for Assembly. I will fight from the day I get to Sacramento to pass universal health care, to fund our schools so every kid can have an equal chance, and to make sure polluters start paying their fair share to clean up our environment.
Please help right now by demanding Universal Health Care for all Californians. Sign the petition on your right - and let our leaders in Sacramento know we are not going to wait for change.
Sincerely,
Tony Thurmond
