LONGECITY

Alvin Steinberg

alvins387@aol.com

We need more medical research because:

1,600,000 Americans will die of 8 diseases yearly. In ten years that amounts to 16,000,000 citizens. This is a big security problem.

We spend $3,100,000,000,000 yearly for health care. 5% of US citizens use 50% of all medical care. That amounts to $1, 600,000,000,000. In addition hundreds of billions of dollars are spent yearly, because of their medical problems, for welfare, food stamps, Social Security Disability, etc. Medical research will help bring down costs and save lives.

$3,600,000,000,000 divided by our population of 320,000,000 amounts to $10,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. A family of 4 costs the USA on average $40,000. Social Security Disability, welfare, food stamps, etc. are in addition to that. Our country pays for that.

The above should be part of the health care discussion. 

These are some figures from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,

In 2002, the 5 percent of people with the greatest health care expenses in the U.S. population spent 49 percent of the overall health care dollar. Those in the top 5% spent, on average, 17 times as much as those in the bottom 50%.

• The lower 50 percent of spenders accounted for 3 percent of the total national health care dollar.
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• (2. Cornwell LJ, Cohen JW. Characteristics of people with high medical expenses in the U.S. civilian noninstutionalized population, 2002. Statistical Brief #73. March 2005. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. Website: fttp://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/data_files/publications/st73.pdf. Accessed April 7, 2006.

We should try to get a lot more Americans into the 50% lower cost of health care with additional medical research. Our scientists, engineers and research physicians are smart enough to figure how to bring our people into what is today the bottom of national health care spending.

Not spending more for medical research is very costly and contributes to a lower quality and quantity of life.

Please Email or call your congressman and senators monthly to encourage them to vote for more medical research at the National Institutes of Health. This is something that you can do to increase the health and welfare of everybody.

Can you get this distributed as a leaflet? May be a nice thing to give out as information. I think that we could do with some people who would hand out such information at events or even just put them up as posters in places like educational institutions.

It makes no sense to treat diseases separately when they accumulate as a result of aging. We demand funding for aging research.