45,000 U.S. deaths a year due to lack of health insurance

[Crazy Dave]

Article:

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.

Contineud at:
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE58G6W520090917

[HillbillyBob]

1. Gee and I thought it was 'only' 18,000

(can't get the sarcasm to work)
I can see where that figure could be higher. I have dealt with both the insurance jerks and hospital billing.

[d_r]

2. THe 18,000 figure

was based on 1993 data from the same group - the number has gone up because the number of uninsured has gone up.

[HillbillyBob]

10. I was going on the figure I keep hearing on news and radio

nt

[Crazy Dave]

3. These days cancer surgery is called "experimental" and gets denied 30% of the time

Or all of the time for the people who can't come up with the co-pay up front.

[Doctor_J]

9. Yeah, that number sounded really low when I heard it.

100K is MUCH more believable, but still low.

[area51]

4. It's 100,000 deaths here per year,

which rounds out to 273 deaths per day. But then, who cares? We have psychopathic teabaggers screaming that they want insurance companies to deny them healthcare and they'd happy with that.

[indepat]

6. Yeah, but Amurika has decided to spend more on national defense than the rest of the world, wage

permanent multiple pre-emptive wars, incarcerate millions of non-violent offenders, and afford multi-trillion dollar tax relief for the most wealthy who already own 95% of the wealth, so the collective wisdom of our government is these needless deaths, a less-than-average life expectancy and higher-than-average infant mortality are but small prices to pay for the greater national good provided by the foregoing. :P

[raccoon]

5. Kick. nt

[yost69]

7. And 195,000 people die each year due to medical erros. hmmmm

Whats the point in having insurance if you are more likely to die from a medical error than not having insurance?

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/11856.php

[Echo In Light]

8. Family Values, Inc