John Geyman, Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine:

Americans are dying at a faster rate — 1 every 12 minutes, 5 an hour, 120 a day, 45,000 a year — not from war or natural disaster, but from lack of health insurance.

That’s the stunning finding of a study published today in the American Journal of Public Health by leading researchers at Harvard Medical School. The report, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” reveals that the uninsured have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private insurance, resulting in 45,000 preventable deaths annually. …

… The Institute of Medicine estimated in 2002 that more than 18,000 Americans between the ages of 19 and 64 were dying each year as a result of being uninsured. The new number is two and a half times that figure.

The people ginning up terror over “death panels” will deny Americans are dying for lack of health care, of course.