Ja drugoj takoj strany nie znaju, gdje tak glodno

IP: 193.188.161.* 03.11.03, 13:13
zyjet czielawiek.

Long queue at drive-in soup kitchen

George Bush's America, the wealthiest nation in history, faces a growing
poverty crisis. In the first of a three-part series Julian Borger takes the
pulse of the US with elections just a year away

Monday November 3, 2003
The Guardian

The free food is handed out at nine, but the queue starts forming hours
earlier. By dawn, there is a line of cars stretching half a mile back. In
Logan, it is what passes for rush hour - a traffic jam driven by poverty and
hunger.
The cars come out of the Ohio hills in all shapes and sizes, from the old
jalopies of the chronically poor, to the newer, sleeker models of the new
members of the club, who only months ago considered themselves middle class,
before jobs and their retirement funds evaporated.

Dan Larkin is sitting in his middle-of-the-range pick-up truck. Since the
glassware company he worked for closed its doors this time last year, he has
found it hard to pay his bills. His unemployment benefits ran out six months
ago and his groceries bill is the only part of his budget that has some give.
He and his wife sometimes skip meals or eat less to make sure their six-year-
old daughter has enough.

"I would have a real problem putting food on the table if it wasn't for
this," Mr Larkin said, his car inching towards Logan's church-run food
pantry. As the queue rolled forward, he reflected on the ironies of being a
citizen of the world's sole superpower.

"They're sending $87bn to the second richest oil nation in the world but
can't afford to feed their own here in the States."

George Bush's America is the wealthiest and most powerful nation the world
has ever known, but at home it is being gnawed away from the inside by
persistent and rising poverty. The three million Americans who have lost
their jobs since Mr Bush took office in January 2001 have yet to find new
work in a largely jobless recovery, and they are finding that the safety net
they assumed was beneath them has long since unravelled. There is not much
left to stop them falling.

Last year alone, another 1.7 million Americans slipped below the poverty
line, bringing the total to 34.6 million, one in eight of the population.
Over 13 million of them are children. In fact, the US has the worst child
poverty rate and the worst life expectancy of all the world's industrialised
countries, and the plight of its poor is worsening.

The ranks of the hungry are increasing in step. About 31 million Americans
were deemed to be "food insecure" (they literally did not know where their
next meal was coming from). Of those, more than nine million were categorised
by the US department of agriculture as experiencing real hunger, defined by
the US department of agriculture as an "uneasy or painful sensation caused by
lack of food due to lack of resources to obtain food."

That was two years ago, before the recession really began to bite. Partial
surveys suggest the problem has deepened considerably since then. In 25 major
cities the need for emergency food rose an average of 19% last year.

Another indicator is the demand for food stamps, the government aid programme
of last resort. The number of Americans on stamps has risen from 17 million
to 22 million since Mr Bush took office.

In Ohio, hunger is an epidemic. Since George Bush won Ohio in the 2000
presidential elections, the state has lost one in six of its manufacturing
jobs. Two million of the state's 11 million population resorted to food
charities last year, an increase of more than 18% from 2001.

In Logan, over 500 families regularly turn out twice monthly at the food
pantry run by the Smith Chapel United Methodist Church.

"In all our history starting in the mid-80s we've never seen these numbers,"
said Dannie Devol, who runs the pantry. The food comes from a regional food
bank, which is stocked by a mix of private donations and food bought from
local farmers by the government.

Efficient


Fresh vegetables, cans of meat and tuna, and boxes of cereal are stacked in
the car park and as the line of cars breaks into two queues to edge past the
pallets, volunteers inspect identity cards (customers have to show they live
in the county and are in need) before loading rations of food into the backs
of the vehicles. It is an efficient and peculiarly American solution to
hunger - a drive-through soup kitchen.

Those without cars hitch rides with neighbours. Mothers come with their
children in the back of trucks. Karin Chriss brought one of her three
children in a 10-year-old Chevrolet van. "If they stopped this I'd be hurt
food-wise. I'm cutting down the amount we eat as it is," Mrs Chriss said. Her
husband is a truck driver but does not earn enough to pay the bills. The
people in Washington, she says, "need to come down and see how many people
are in these lines".

Not many Washington politicians do. There was a time when fighting this kind
of poverty was at the core of American politics: Franklin Roosevelt made it
his life's work; Lyndon Johnson declared a war on poverty with his Great
Society programmes in the 1960s.

There are more Americans living in poverty now than there were in 1965, but
neither party has much to say about it. The Bush Republicans see it as a
matter for "faith-based charities", the status quo before Roosevelt's New
Deal in the 1930s. The trouble is that hard times are drying up donations at
the very time private charities are being asked to take on most of the
burden.

Democrats, meanwhile, are anxious not to appear as class warriors, and most
of the Democratic presidential contenders in this election portray themselves
as champions of the middle class, for good reason. Americans who see
themselves as middle class are much more likely to vote than those who know
they are poor. Mrs Chriss thinks all parties should be abolished. Angela
Cooper, also queuing with a young child, complains that families like hers
have been forgotten. But then again, she has relatives posted in Iraq and
feels she ought to "support our troops" by voting for the president.

"There's resentment down deep but people don't know what to do with it. A lot
of people turn inward, rather than outward. You think it would be ripe for an
outcry. But it's not, it's all kind of dulled," said Bob Garbo, who runs a
regional food distribution centre in this corner of Ohio. "There's a feeling
you can't do much about it, that politicians are all bad. Voting rates are
down, and politicians are taking advantage of that. Here, only 20% turn out
to vote in some counties."

It is hardly surprising the very poor feel they have no one to turn to. A
string of local factories have closed in the past two years to relocate to
Mexico, a delayed consequence of the North American Free Trade Agreement
established by Bill Clinton in 1994. And two years later, it was Clinton, in
cooperation with a staunchly Republican Congress, who dismantled much of the
welfare system built in the New Deal and the Great Society. Clinton's welfare
reform set a time limit on how long the poor and unemployed could draw social
security payments. It helped force people back into work with the
encouragement of an array of federally funded job training programmes.

It worked well while the economy was booming, cutting the number on welfare
from 12 million to five million in a few years. But now there are no jobs.
Those who went to work under welfare reform are among the first to be fired,
and often find that welfare is no longer available to them. Some have used up
their lifetime maximum. Some have accumulated too many assets to qualify,
such as a car or a house that they do not want to sell for fear of falling
yet further into destitution.

Others have had difficulty d
    • Gość: Tysprowda Re: Ja drugoj takoj strany nie znaju, gdje tak IP: 193.188.161.* 03.11.03, 14:30
      wolno dyszit czielowiek.

      Ale Amerykanie narzekaja, jak widac z jednego listu:

      "We no longer live in a free country according to definition of Dubya:
      On October 3 this year, he said,
      'See, free nations are peaceful nations.
      Free nations don't attack each other.
      Free nations don't develop "weapons of mass destruction.' "

      Nie zyjemy juz w wolnym kraju zgodnie z definicja Debila.
      3 pazdziernika onze powiedzial takoz:

      Wicie, rozumicie, wolne kraje sa krajami pokojowymi.

      Wolne kraje nie atakuja sie wzajemnie.

      Wolne kraje nie rozwijaja "bronimasowego razenia".

      Bez whisky nie razbierjosz.....

    • Gość: sz szok IP: *.astro.su.se 03.11.03, 19:24
      o kurcze! To ci glodni z Ohio nie emigruja do Irlandii, Szwecji (i Polski) chyba
      tylko dlatego ze nie potrafia zlokalizowac na globusie krajow skad ich
      pradziadkowie przyjechali?
      Przyznam ze artykulik ma swoj posmak, nawet jesli jest odrobine zlosliwy.

      A ilu ludzi w Polsce podpada pod definicje glodu (obecnie ok 10 mln Amerykanow,
      cos kolo 1 na 25 !):
      "uneasy or painful sensation caused by
      lack of food due to lack of resources to obtain food." ? Moze procentowo
      tyle samo?

      sz (najedzony)
      • Gość: Tysprowda Re: szok IP: 193.188.161.* 04.11.03, 14:15
        W Polsce jest blogoslawiony system amerykanski, wiec glodni musza byc.

        A ze Polska zawsze byla biedniejsza od USSA, wiec na pewno ma wiecej glodnych.

        Jasne teraz?
    • Gość: Tysprowda Re: Ja drugoj takoj strany nie znaju, gdje tak IP: 193.188.161.* 04.11.03, 14:16
      bolnyj zyje czielawiek.

      Land where calling an ambulance is first step to bankruptcy

      The second in a three-part series on Bush's America looks at the inflated
      hospital bills facing the uninsured poor

      Julian Borger
      Tuesday November 4, 2003
      The Guardian

      Rose Shaffer's heart attack taught her a lot of things that, as a nurse, she
      should have known. She learnt it pays to eat carefully and exercise regularly.
      And she learnt the hard way that if you cannot afford medical insurance in
      America, you better hope you don't get sick.
      A Chicago hospital saved Mrs Shaffer's life but she feels it is now trying to
      take it back. Since that frantic October night three years ago, the hospital
      owners, a Christian, non-profit foundation, have hounded her for crushing bills
      she could not afford, partly because as an uninsured patient she had been
      charged double.

      The hospital sent debt collectors after her who called her all hours of the
      night, at home and work, until she gave in and was forced into bankruptcy. Now,
      at the age most people are thinking of retiring, she has to work long hours
      seven days a week at a nursing agency for the next three years to have any hope
      of holding on to her last asset, a suburban bungalow.

      "When I was young I thought that, when you reach 60, if you don't have
      anything, then you're nothing. Well, I'm 63 and I don't have nothing, and I'm
      not going to get anything," Mrs Shaffer said, sitting at her kitchen table
      sifting through some of her latest bills.

      "The whole system is messed up. In this country the rich get richer and the
      poor get poorer, and no matter how much you work, you're going to get poorer."

      In the US today, there are nearly 44 million people in her position - without
      medical insurance in a country that does not guarantee basic healthcare - and
      the crisis is deepening. In the three years since George Bush took office, the
      ranks of the uninsured have risen by 10%, or four million people. The
      government will pay if you are destitute but not if you earn enough to keep
      above the poverty line - about $18,000 (£10,600) for a family of four. In
      theory, employers are supposed to provide health insurance but more opt not to,
      and buying cover individually is either very expensive or impossible if you
      have a "pre-existing condition".

      Consequently, 15% of the population, most of them the working poor, live in the
      fear that an accident or sudden illness could plunge them into debt. The
      uninsured will typically put off going to see a doctor in the hope that their
      medical problems will pass. They tend to seek treatment only when their
      condition is critical.

      Almost everyone in US politics, including all the candidates in the
      presidential campaign, agree the situation is unacceptable but differ widely on
      how to fix it. A succession of presidents, from Harry Truman more than half a
      century ago to Bill Clinton in 1993, have floated grand schemes for achieving
      universal healthcare coverage, but each time they have been defeated by
      resistance from the medical profession, employers and the tax-averse.

      "I think the problem is the extent of income redistribution it would take to
      make it happen," said Karen Davis, the head of the Commonwealth Fund, an
      independent health and social policy foundation. "The greatest sentiment for
      change comes when the economy is bad, but that's also when resources are at
      their shortest."

      There are public hospitals across America, but their size and number are tiny
      compared to the scale of the problem. Chicago has Cook County hospital which is
      overwhelmed in most departments by the sheer volume of needy patients. But it
      does have a world class emergency room and excellent trauma specialists.

      Rose Shaffer, however, did not have the good fortune to suffer her heart attack
      near the Cook County ER. The ambulance did what it was supposed to - take her
      to the nearest trauma centre, at South Suburban hospital, part of a Lutheran-
      run chain called Advocate Health Care. Two days later, she was transferred to
      another Advocate hospital, Christ medical centre.

      Charity


      Christ's is the biggest hospital in its region, and its illuminated cross soars
      over Chicago's southern suburbs like a beacon - a vivid symbol of what
      President Bush calls faith-based charity. As a non-profit organisation Christ's
      is supposed to offer care to the needy, but there is no state requirement for
      just how much charity it should mete out. Mrs Shaffer said that when she was
      recovering from her heart attack, a hospital official told her she would be
      sent application forms for charity assistance. They never came. Instead, she
      received a bill for $18,000 - $6,000 for each day she spent at Christ's.

      According to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which has
      investigated Advocate and other "charitable" hospitals in the Chicago area, Mrs
      Shaffer's bill would only have been $8,500 if she had been insured. Medical
      insurance firms typically negotiate heavily discounted rates for clients. The
      uninsured have no such leverage, and according to SEIU's hospital
      accountability project, end up paying on average 139% more than the insured.
      Joseph Geevarghese, the project director, said: "When these people go to
      hospital they lose their home." The hospitals often see the uninsured ("self-
      pay" in the jargon) as a profit opportunity. In the words of an industry
      consultant, Michael Zimmerman, "self-pay now stands alone as the financial
      category that will provide the biggest bank for the buck".

      "It can and should be a cash cow for the hospitals, but it is not," Mr
      Zimmerman wrote in a newsletter for hospital administrators. He argues
      hospitals are not being tough enough when it comes to debt collection from
      patients.

      Mrs Shaffer said there was no lack of enthusiasm in her hospital's pursuit of
      her money. "The collection people were real nasty," she complained. "They'd
      call on Sunday, they'd call at 9 o'clock at night. They'd call on the job. My
      voicemail was full. It was harassment."

      Advocate says it is no more aggressive than any other hospital. In fact,
      according to Ed Domansky, a chain spokesman, the hospital is obliged by federal
      law to make "reasonable efforts" to collect debts, and to maintain a uniform
      price structure, which does not allow giving automatic discretionary discounts
      to the uninsured. The SEIU, he said, was picking on Advocate hospital because
      it was seeking to organise its workers, and he pointed out the chain had
      recently expanded its charity care, and made more effort to inform the
      uninsured about its availability.

      "This is not just an issue in one hospital or one state," Mr Domansky said. "We
      believe the federal regulations on hospital billing make the plight of the
      uninsured worse, and we would welcome change."

      Deep trouble


      It is not just the uninsured who can end up impoverished. Richard Roche thought
      he had insurance. His employer, a cab company, did not provide it, so he paid
      more than $400 a month for his own policy. When he had to have a growth removed
      from his windpipe, his insurer agreed to pay only a fraction of the cost. The
      hospital went after him rather than the insurer and the bills eventually forced
      the 61-year-old into bankruptcy. He had to sell his house and cashed in his
      life insurance. "They got me. Once you get sick - that's it. You're in deep
      trouble."

      Ronald Pollack, the head of a Washington pressure group, Families USA,
      said: "This problem reaches deeper and deeper into middle class and working
      families. For most Americans it has gone from an issue of altruism for a
      discrete, disadvantaged population, to an issue of self-interest."

      The crisis has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Remedies vary in
      cost and ambition, from schemes to expand Me
Pełna wersja