SEATTLE - Doctors at Harborview Medical Center call it an "epidemic" - more young adults are dying from trauma injuries than AIDS and stroke combined.

But with all the charity care and the economic recession, trauma centers around the country, including Harborview, are now suffering themselves.

In the past eight years, 20 hospitals have closed their trauma centers. They just can't afford the cost of specialized and often charity care.

Now U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., is fighting to get financial life support for Harborview and other trauma centers that are hemorrhaging money.

"Trauma centers are facing enormous stresses," says Murray.

Her efforts, if successful, will help Harborview, the only Level 1 trauma center in a four-state region - responsible for one-quarter of the country's land mass.

"Accidents don't discriminate between rich and poor, neither should our trauma care center," says Dr. Ron Maier, Harborview's surgeon-in-chief.

He says Harborview gives $110 million in charity care each year - that's 21 percent of the hospital's total expenditures.

"It's hard for a hospital to sustain that and stay open," he says, adding that only 10 percent of hospitals nationwide meet the qualifications to be a true trauma center.

With that kind of gifting, combined with the economic recession, Sen. Murray says it's no wonder trauma centers are closing. That's why she's touting proposed legislation that would that make federal grants available to hospitals facing the highest uncompensated costs.

"Getting a trauma victim to a trauma center right away is the first step in saving their lives," Murray says.

Peter Choi suffered a traumatic brain injury when he was attacked by a man last year. Now he insists that the quick response from Harborview's trauma doctors saved his life, by providing critical and specialized care within the "golden hour" - the first 60 minutes after his injury.

"If this had happened somewhere in the middle of nowhere, I would be dead now," Choi says.

Now, says Sen. Murray, financial life support could be a matter of life and death for trauma centers and their patients.