One Death Every Twelve Minutes

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.

5 thoughts on “One Death Every Twelve Minutes

  1. The people ginning up terror over “death panels” know full well their audience will accept as gospel anything–no matter how far-fetched or removed from reality–that matches what it wishes to believe. So they start by creating a “belief” and then work backwards to conjure up “facts” to support it: Obama is a dangerous, stealth black Muslum foreigner who wants to destroy the United States, and Liberals hate Democracy and want to enslave your children with debt.

    Once a person buys into that garbage–boy, do the string-pullers have a load of crap to sell you. No truth or logic necessary.

  2. I heard this stat raised in contrast to the number being lost in Iraqand Afghanistan.

    Once heard it becomes rather hard to maintain the same old priorities with value of human life being prio #1, doesn’t it? The logic is impeccable and this should be sued more often. It handily puts a host of other arguments against health care to rest.

    Those who say we can’t afford it are spending much more to throw many more lives down the drain than spending less would save. Are we insane?

  3. Remember, they don’t “lack” health care. They have all they could want – at the emergency room!
    What idiots…

  4. if you want a more accurate figure on unemployment you can also take the number of un employed and mutiply it by 2.5 and get amore acc urate on unemployment. you can also takr the 50 million people who have no insurance and multiply by 2.5 and get amore accurate number of people who dont have insurance.i really dont think the american people have any idea how many jobs have been sent over seas or how many people have been shipped here to work for lower wages, so that corporations can make more profit

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