One reason to avoid hospitals if you can

But for the want of a can of Lysol….

As reported by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn of Health Populi:

U.S. hospital finances are so stretched in the current recession, infection prevention efforts have begun to be curtailed.

32% of health facilities say that reductions in staffing and infection prevention (IP) departments have reduced their capacity to deal with IP in their institutions.

America is a democracy…Right?

It is. Really.

American may learn this fact by considering the good work their representatives do for them every day. Robert Parry has noticed. He recently wrote:

As the health insurance industry and its defenders in Congress lay out their case against permitting a public option in a reform bill, perhaps their most curious argument is that some 119 million Americans are ready to dump their private plans and jump to something more like Medicare — and that's why the choice can't be permitted [emphasis added].

But would that outcome not ruin the for-profit insurance industry? It would if the government and its program were able to defeat the private insurers in a fair competition. In fact:

…the industry and its backers are acknowledging that more than one-third of the American people are so dissatisfied with their private health insurance that they trust the U.S. government to give them a fairer shake on health care. The industry says its allies in Congress must prevent that.

Their exodus would create a situation in which the federal government would likely become the primary provider of health care insurance coverage for the country as a whole.

Naturally, and as Parry indicates, many Congressional Republicans and some Democrats oppose including the government provision option in any reform bill Congress may care to discuss in the near future. This sad fact generates the following question: These Congressmen and –women represent whom?