Catching up on some old stuff, from a few days ago, Moms Demand Action posted a link to this article from The Trace Private Insurance Pays a Tiny Fraction of Gunshot-Victim Health Costs.

The article starts with this sentence:

“More than two thirds of gunshot victims admitted to American hospitals are covered by Medicaid, or don’t have health insurance at all. And the price of that care is staggering: The average annual cost per admission for a firearm assault injury is $20,989, more than twice that of a typical hospital stay.”

Being a cynical SOB, I thought back to the news I heard last night: 4 Dead, 30 Wounded In Labor Day Weekend Shootings In Chicago.  Checking in with Hey Jackass and several other sources, it seems that 100% of this weekend’s shootings were gang related.

So if I do the math: most gunshot victims are on Medicaid + nearly (if not) all the weekend violence in places like Chicago is gang/drug related = no shit!

Poor criminals and gang members are shooting each other and we’re picking up the tab.  Great…

“The total annual cost for gunshot patients reliant on Medicaid alone amounted to $205 million.

It’s important to recognize that this is a public cost,” said Corinne Peek-Asa, the study’s lead author and director of the University of Iowa Injury Prevention Research Center. “Being admitted for a firearm injury is very expensive, and we see so much of that cost is from uninsured or Medicaid sources. Which, for hospitals that see a high volume of firearm injuries, is going to be a challenge.”

I’d say so.  Maybe we should do something about that.

What does MDA say.

A tax and make the NRA pay for it.

It’s unfair to call gun control groups one trick ponies.  They are generally Left Wing and the Left knows two tricks: ban it and tax it.

I was in Chicago when Cook County passed their gun tax.  Cook County tried to pay for the cost of gang shootings by charging a $25 per gun tax on all guns sold in Cook County.  Amazingly it failed.  The tax is still in place but nobody buys guns in Cook County.  The gun counter at the Cabela’s in Hoffman Estates is one of the saddest sights I’ve ever seen.

Beyond besides not bringing in the expected level of revenue, it was an insult to law abiding gun owners.  Why should the deer hunter from Schaumburg pay extra to treat some Gangster Disciple who got shot in a drug war in Franklin Park.

By the time you factor in sales tax and the gun tax, everybody goes to the Bass Pro in Bollingbrook.

Personally, this is a job for Civil Asset Forfeiture.  Take everything from the gang members to pay for cost of the gang shootings.

Nope.

The attitude of the The Trace – which makes no mention of the gang or crime connection with shootings – is that these poor people are just innocent victims.  Anti-gun groups want law abiding gun owners to foot the bill.

I can’t think of a worse situation that making the criminals who get shot not have to pay for the cost of their own shooting.

But when has an anti-gun group ever proposed anything actually useful.