2,266 Veterans Died In 2008 Because They Were Uninsured
What is the solution?
HP-According to a study released by the Harvard Medical School, 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year as a result of not having health insurance. Researchers emphasize that “that figure is more than 14 times the number of deaths (155) suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2008, and more than twice as many as have died (911 as of Oct. 31) since the war began in 2001.”
The 1.46 million working-age veterans that did not have health insurance last year all experienced reduced access to care as a consequence, leading to “six preventable deaths a day.”
Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people — too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at Harvard Medical School. [...]
Dr. David Himmelstein, the co-author of the report and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented, “On this Veterans Day we should not only honor the nearly 500 soldiers who have died this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the more than 2,200 veterans who were killed by our broken health insurance system. That’s six preventable deaths a day.”
The study’s authors warn that the health care legislation “would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013″ and would “leave at least 17 million uninsured over the long run when reform kicks in,” leaving many veterans still without care.
Sounds like they should’ve gotten health insurance.
You can obtain healthcare without insurance, only you get the bill. You don’t have reduced access to care. 20 million illegal aliens avail themselves of all kinds of healthcare, and give false names to avoid payment.
I am suspicious of how they calculated the number of deaths. Even people with insurance and access to care die at all different ages. Some even die as a result of medical intervention. The cause of death is most important, did they pick say heart attacks or cancer, and subtract the number of people who died from that disease with health insurance from those who died from that disease without?
By the way, if anyone thinks our healthcare access will improve with socialized medicine, you are in for a big awakening.
I was watching the British Parliament the other day, and Gordon Brown was promising all this money to improve the health service in Britain. He is now guaranteeing, after the money infusion, that the wait to see a “consultant” (what the heck is that?) will be reduced from 3 months to 1 month.
How long will Americans put up with telling their sick children, with a painful sore throat and fever, that they cannot help them for a month?
Another Harvard study put together by s-word activists advocating Obamacare.
Using their numbers, 1,460,000 working age veterans did not have health insurance of which 2,266 died. So just over .01% of veterans w/o health insurance died meaning 99.99% lived.
Headline — 99.99% of veterans without health insurance survived 2008!
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You are clearly pro-death – as evidenced by statements such as that. (A little Konopian logic for ya . . . just in case you wanted a reminder of how it sounds.)