The White House asked for $29 million for poison control centers. The GOP thinks that $2 million is more than enough. The $27 million in savings wouldn't fill a quarter of the penny jar in the Federal budget.
Cut's have consequences though and this one does as well. Poison centers ar already losing local and stat funding sm many will either close or merge.
57 Poison control centers handle about 4 million calls a year. On average about 75% of those calls are resolved with treatment advice by phone with no further action. Without the poison control centers the first option will be a costly visit to the emergency room with the taxpayer picking up the tab in many cases. A call to a poison center costs about $30-$40 each.
A study in the Journal of Medical Toxicology estimated that the poison centers saved the State of Arizona alone $33 million a year. Louisiana eliminated its centers in the 1980s but restored them when it realized how much money they saved. The cost to a state like Arizona alone exceeds the entire savings to the budget.
Quite obviously, no thought was given to either the problem or the solution by the GOP other than it being a little more read meat to appeal to the brain dead ideologues of the Tea Party persuasion.
Then again, more people will die prematurely without the poison control centers reducing the burden on Social Security so there may be some method to their madness,
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