As I am watching the coverage today on CNN of the terrorist attack on Mumbai, the coverage goes to the anchorperson who says “We just want to talk about the other major news story that is happening now ….” And he gave a brief report on a commercial airplane that has gone down in the Atlantic. As unfortunate as the event was, at least at first report, it had less than ten passengers on board. It merited national – for all practical purposes, international – coverage.

It reminded me of the “plane crash” that the news media misses everyday. Consider the lead from an April 8, 2008 article from Science magazine entitled “Medical Errors Cost US $8.8 Billion”: “Patient safety incidents cost the federal Medicare program $8.8 billion and resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths during 2004 through 2006, according to HealthGrades’ fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study.” Let’s do some math. 238,337 deaths over three years averages 79,445 annually. And that equals about 217 deaths a day. In the United States. From medical mistakes. And that counts only Medicare patients.

A search for other articles about the same subject actually is more depressing. An August 9, 2004, article in Medical News Today, pegged the number of in-hospital deaths in the US at 195,000 daily (based on a study conducted in 2000 – 2002. That equates to 534 deaths daily due to medical mistakes in hospitals in our nation.

A 747 super jet, in its configuration for the most number of passengers in a two-class flight holds about 525 people. Now consider the news coverage that you will see next time there a 747 goes down. It will probably be a multi-day story that will be either the lead story or near that status in news coverage globally. But if everyone of that plane dies, it still will not total the number of people who die from medical mistakes in hospitals in the U.S. every day of the year. That’s a “plane crash” that happens every day that gets no news coverage at all. Perhaps if it did get appropriate coverage, it would be easier to get true health care reform in this nation.