BAD MEDICINE

The presidential candidates are grappling over the plight of the uninsured, yet you're five times more likely to die from visiting a hospital than from not having health insurance, according to the not-for-profit Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths:

• One in 200 patients who spends a night or more in a hospital will die from medical error.
• One in 16 will pick up an infection.
• Deaths from preventable hospital infections each year exceed 100,000, more than those from AIDS, breast cancer and auto accidents combined.

Hospitals are still the heart of the health care industry, consuming a third of the $2 trillion U.S. health care bill. Because the hospital industry does all it can to thwart competition, many communities are stuck with the hospitals they have...

[go Wal-Mart]

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