The Culture of Death

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year -- one every 12 minutes -- in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday.

"We're losing more Americans every day because of inaction ... than drunk driving and homicide combined," Dr. David Himmelstein, a co-author of the study and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard, said in an interview with Reuters.

Overall, researchers said American adults age 64 and younger who lack health insurance have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those who have coverage.

The Republicans are more concerned about the "redistribution of wealth" from them to people who they think don't deserve it then they are the dignity of human life.

That's ultimately what motivates them.. this fear that some undeserving bum may benefit from a tax payer funded program... or as Greenwald notes;

At the same time, [the health care protests have] become the vessel for a year’s worth of anxieties about bailouts, deficits and Beltway incompetence.

This August’s town-hall fury wasn’t just about the details of health care. Neither were the anti-Obama protests that crowded Washington over the weekend. They were about the Wall Street bailout, the G.M. takeover, the A.I.G. bonuses, and countless smaller examples of middle-income Americans’ "playing by the rules," as [GOP pollster Frank] Luntz puts it, "and having someone else benefit."

Never mind that it's more cost effective to have "someone else benefit", it's also the humane thing to do.

What else can you expect from a movement that fear mongers their way into endless wars that kill hundreds of thousands?

/update

An unrelated factoid;

INCOME SHIFTS

Change in median income from 2000-08 (in 2008 dollars):

Age Men Women
15-24 -9.7% -3.3%

25-34 -11.7% -2.9%

35-44 -6.8% -0.8%

45-54 -11.2% -4.8%

55-64 -2.3% 20.6%

65-74 8% 8.7%

75+ 1.9% 3.5%

Source: Census Bureau

No doubt that this is not related to a chimpanzee in the White House and a Repbulican controlled Congress.

Nah.. couldn't be.