From The Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/fiscal-cliff-cuts-austerity-poverty
Our nurses see dire need every day in the ER, but the growing gulf of inequality in the US has made such deprivation ubiquitous
RoseAnn DeMoro
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 December 2012
With a compromise on social security now unmasked – costing the elderly an estimated 6.2-7.7%, according to business writer Doug Henwood – America becomes more and more a place of poverty. Warnings that austerity begets poverty will go ignored, but the nation’s deteriorating condition cannot so easily be overlooked.
No surprise, in this milieu of victimizing the most marginal, that one anniversary has received far too little attention. This year, 2012, marked the 50th anniversary of a ground breaking book, The Other America, by Michael Harrington, a searing examination of rampant poverty in the richest nation on earth. A prominent review of Harrington’s work in the New Yorker magazine, reportedly brought to the attention of then President John F Kennedy, ultimately helped influence the Great Society reforms later launched by his successor Lyndon B Johnson.
But half a century later, we seem to be back to square one in this country.
For the past two years, the nation’s largest nurses’ organization, National Nurses United, has promoted a program to spur revitalization of our economy to assist families in financial peril. Our campaign was largely spurred by an alarming spike in patients presenting in hospital emergency rooms and clinics across the country who are forced to choose between paying medical bills, their rent or mortgage or feeding their families.
The crisis nurses saw was not an aberration. By 2011, with the recent recession showing scant signs of abating, official US poverty figures had soared to nearly 50 million Americans. Some in the political arena tend to pigeonhole poverty by race, but this calamity crosses all lines of gender, geography, age, and ethnicity.
Last year, almost one in four children lived in a family that regularly had difficulty affording sufficient food, according to the US department of agriculture. On the other end of life, 8.3 million people over 60 in 2010 faced the threat of hunger, up 78% from a decade earlier – yet another reason to oppose the proposed fiscal cliff cuts in social security or Medicare.
Hunger and malnutrition, as nurses will attest, lead to a broad array of health problems, ranging from reduced immunity to disease or even organ failure. For children, poor nutrition can severely stunt cognitive development and growth. For adults and seniors, the consequences can include more chronic illnesses and shorter life spans.
Continue reading at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/19/fiscal-cliff-cuts-austerity-poverty
