[Willie Bee]

While the U.S. media gave prime time to gun-toting health reform opponents, they all but ignored a Harvard study, reported last week in the American Journal of Public Health, that found nearly 45,000 people die in the U.S. each year largely because they lack health insurance.

I found this to be an interesting stat, plommer. I'd love to know what criteria was used to determine this number and exactly what it was these 45,000 died from.

But just for fun, let's work on the assumption that their cause of death was: Not having health insurance.

Now let's look at some other stats.

The mortality rate in the US is about 810 per 100,000 people. I found one site that listed the US population at 305.5 million people. So that means that approximately 2.5 million people will die in the US this year.

The number of Americans without any health insurance is generally bandied about to be 46 million. That works out to 15% of the population without health insurance, which is real close to the 17% figure that has also been tossed around in discussions recently.

Now if there are 46,000,000 Americans walking around without health insurance, and 45,000 of them are going to die because they don't have health insurance, that means that 45,955,000 Americans are going to live without health insurance.

Did you know that, according to the CDC, some 73,000 Americans are going to die this year from Alzheimers? It doesn't include any data on how many of those have health insurance.

Health insurance has, in my opinion, become a sort of necessary evil. The necessary part has to do with the desire to live a good life and not have one debilitating injury or illness force someone into bankruptcy, cause them to lose their home, be able to afford the pursuit of happiness and all that rot. The evil part would be the accountants, lawyers and Madison Avenue starched shirts that have their hands in the pie.

But I will ask all non-Americans to please answer this for me: For a long time now, and especially in the last decade, non-Americans have been blasting the US Government for heavy-handed and totally inept foreign policy. Why is it that now these same non-Americans want us all to trust the very same government to manage our health care system?

[andywend]

I don't agree with Willie Bee too often but this was a fantastic post worthy of being nominated.