Mitt Romney revealed his cluelessness and lack of understanding for those without health insurance last week in an interview with the Columbus Dispatch, where he ignorantly purported that no one dies in America due to lack of health insurance.
“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’ ” ... “No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.” ...
Well, The Center for Disease Control estimates that a minimum of 45,000 people die each year due to lack of health care.
Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.
The study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.
This study controlled for socioeconomic, and behavioral factors as well as baseline health.
Also, a few days ago, Sanja Gupta pointed out that it is not true that hospitals and charities "pick up the tab" after uninsured people have to go to the emergency rooms. The truth is that collection agencies get these accounts and hound the poor for years, often into bankruptcy.
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