135,000 uninsured Americans will die before health reform takes effect, analysis finds

[kpete]

Source: Raw Story

If Democrats manage to pull off efforts to reform the US healthcare system and ensure coverage for millions who are currently without insurance, the new system -- by design -- will likely still leave tens of thousands to die without insurance before reforms kick in.

A Raw Story analysis, based on a recent Harvard Medical School study, estimates that 135,000 American citizens and over 6,600 US veterans will die due to a lack of health insurance before current proposed healthcare reform measures would take effect.

One hundred and thirty-five thousand US lives far exceeds the total number of Americans who died in the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the attacks of 9/11 combined. The lives of over 6,600 US veterans is more -- by over 1,300 -- than the total number of US soldiers who have thus far died in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor of medicine at Harvard University and co-author of the Harvard Medical School study, called Raw Story’s estimates “quite reasonable.”

Read more: http://rawstory.com/2009/12/135000-uninsured-americans-die-health-reform-takes-effect-study/

[AzDar]

1. Yet "terra" is the REAL threat to this country according to some.

:puke:

[Javaman]

4. If we could only figure out how to tie health care reform with fear

we would have a single payer system.

[Unvanguard]

2. But that's the status quo. When the bill does take effect, it will save tens of thousands of lives.

As the study itself by implication indicates.

[Zodiak]

7. Which will be YEARS down the road

Read the article. We could have saved these 100,000+ americans

But we aren't....so fucking Joe Leiberman and his blue dogs can score a few points.

Our conservative Democrats are sacrificing 100,000+ Americans for their ideology....and then they are going to ask us progressives to vote for them.

I'd sooner punch them in the face or spit on them than vote for them.

[BennyD]

3. I would head to the emergency room before I stayed at home w/o treatment. n/t

[tekisui]

5. For many, it is too late by the time they final make that trip.

[TexasObserver]

6. Didn't you hear? We have peasants to kill in the third world.

We can't afford health care reform. We need that money to spend $1 mil per soldier per year.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

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[flyarm]

9. "Remember Joe Lieberman was Obama’s Mentor in the Senate"

Remember Joe Lieberman was Obama’s Mentor in the Senate

By: fflambeau Monday December 14, 2009 10:05 pm

Those who are up in arms over Sen. Joe Lieberman’s "veto" of the extension of Medicare should remember this. When Sen. Barack Obama arrived in Washington, D.C. in 2005, he selected as his mentor none other than: Joe Lieberman.

Here’s David Sirota writing about this, after discussing Obama’s stab in the back of the progressive Lamont in Connecticut and his stab in the back of the progressive Christine Cegelis (Obama backed Duckworth) way back in 2006:

snip:

Other sources, including the Hartford Courant, reported that Obama chose Lieberman as his mentor.]

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/18929

[SOCALS]

10. Why did they postpone the reform ?

Whose idea was it to postpone the reform for several years? Why can't they just start it immediately after it is approved?