Headlines such as "Republicans Pan Trump Budget" and "Donald Trump’s Budget Is Universally Unloved" have suggested that identifying problems with President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget has been like pointing out wet spots on the Titanic. For example, a chorus along the political spectrum have criticized the proposed drastic National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget cuts, arguing that it could be the "jump the shark" moment for the United States. (a reference to the Happy Days episode that began the ultimate decline and demise of the popular sitcom series). No American should want the United States to become Joannie Loves Chachi or the Happy Days that had the Married with Children neighbor Ted McGinley in it, so the hope among many is that the NIH cut will not get through Congress. But one overlooked potential casualty of the Trump budget is AHRQ. And this casualty could literally kill you.
AHRQ may sound like something you would say when you step on a tack or a cat with tacks. But AHRQ is short for Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, the federal government entity dedicated to patient safety. In other words, AHRQ aims to find innovative ways to prevent medical errors and healthcare associated infections (HAIs) and the physical and mental harm and deaths that can result. As the AHRQ website explains , AHRQ "invests in research and evidence to make health care safer and improve quality", "creates materials to teach and train health care systems and professionals to help them improve care for their patients", and "generates measures and data used to track and improve performance and evaluate progress of the U.S. Health system".
An error or an infection in a hospital, clinic, operating room, or nursing home is a lot more likely to harm or kill you than a terrorist attack, a nuclear war, an invasion, or many of the things that may get increases in funding if the Trump budget were to pass. In fact, a study from Johns Hopkins University published in BMJ found that 10 percent of all U.S. deaths (or over 250,000 deaths per year) are now due to medical errors, making it the third leading cause of death in the U.S. Estimates of the annual costs of medical errors have reached $1 trillion. Such numbers are probably underestimates since many medical errors go unnoticed. Add to these numbers the toll of HAIs, many of which aren't counted as medical errors. A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) video explains that about 1 in every 25 hospital patients get an HAI. The HAI Prevalence Survey reported that in 2011 an estimated 722,000 HAIs occurred in U.S. acute care hospitals resulting in about 75,000 deaths. Again these are also underestimates because many HAIs occur in outpatient clinics and nursing homes.
These problems affect everyone, no matter how wealthy or famous you may be. The Richest listed major medical errors that occurred for Hulk Hogan, Julie Andrews, Dana Carvey, John Ritter, Joan Rivers, and Michael Jackson. Here Actor Dennis Quaid describes how his twins' lives were threatened by accidental medication overdoses:
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