Ma'am;... As Joe Stalin pointed out, the deaths of thousands is a statistic... The numbers are baffling; and really beyond comprehension... We all know death, and all fear death, but death is not always at the door, and so we relax...But if we have ever really known grief as a constant weight that ever oppresses, then the death of another, or the death of thousands is hard to contemplate.... We all know that this country was founded with a statement of human rights, that all are equal, with the right to life and pursuit of happiness... Health and health care are essential to both rights, and if good health becomes the privilage of the rich for all time, then worries and grief will attend the people... Health care is but a sign that our lives, our health, our rights, and our livelyhoods are but inessential expenses to some people... If their rights to rob others of their resources is threatened, then they have money for war, but they have no money for peace if peace means the health and welfare of the people... ...I know the great divide in this land is not between liberals and conservatives... The wall no one can surmount is between conservatives and reactionaries...There are a lot of people who are conservative because they see the present good traded for a painful promise, and that is most of us.... Then there are reactionaries, fat with wealth, or sleek with power who would wrench back the hands of time until they point to when brute butchered brute for the blood of survival... We have worked hard for progress in this land... We have suffered much for the cruel promise of better, faster, and easier... All our technology has done is idle more and more -while making eternal the workday of the remaining slaves... We do not have better lives than before... We have contintually worse lives punctuated by monotonous worries of health and wealth... Why does the political system demand so much time on top of everything else for so few good miles??? It is a tinkertoy from a time when men were children... We put so much into politics, and the money is just the start for we give much of our lives; but what we get out is everything other than the good for which government was designed... I don't care how many people actually died for lack of insurance, or of wanting decent insurance... I care that one actual person died for lack of good medical care what ever the price... I don't care that people had treatment when they died if they were denied attention when it may have saved them... We don't need Doctor House... 99.9 percent of health care is basic medicine...It is those who wish to prolong life forever, which is usually the rich, and always the unjust -who most need expensive medical technology... If we had equality... If the rich suffered the very same conditions as the poor, they would still live longer, but care would improve for all...We cannot have equality, nor life without health... If the form of our economy, or society, or religion, or government deny us happiness, then we will not be healthy....This is a land of deep emotional pain, and the only medicine that will help most is by most refused; and that is justice... Thanks...Sweeney

Just ignore Mr. Sweeny's rambling rants. He's a left-wing loony who has a pathological hatred of the rich (plutophobia?) and thinks capitalism is the root of all evil.

The published study (American Journal of Public Health, Sept. 2009), though deeply flawed, is quite interesting and revealing in some respects. First, by properly controlling the study population for numerous variables, including income, they showed that those without health insurance were more likely to die than those with insurance (3.3% vs 3.0% over 9 years). So despite income, exercise, smoking, etc. being equal, there is obviously something else about the people that chose to buy health insurance that allowed them to live longer than those people who did not buy health insurance. The authors admit that some "unmeasured characteristics" may explain their findings. Perhaps people who spend their money on health insurance (instead of other things) place more value on their health???

Also, the authors excluded everyone with government health insurance (Medicare, MediCal, VA, etc.) from their study. So in effect they compared people with no health insurance to those with private health insurance. Although the media have quickly distorted the findings by generalizing that a lack of "health insurance" is responsible for 44,000 Americans dying prematurely, any conclusions from this study pertain only to a lack of private health insurance. Implying that we may improve health or extend lives in America by providing more government health insurance is therefore speculative at best.