Obamacare's Promise

In 2009, a Harvard Medical study found that the lack of health insurance caused 45,000 surplus deaths in the United States each year.  It kind of figures, too, doesn't it?  If you don't have insurance then you don't go to the doctor unless whatever is bothering you gets so bad that you don't have a choice, and, by that time, if what's bothering you is something like a previously undetected cancer, then it's probably too late.  It's progressed too far.  Too bad you didn't have insurance when the symptoms were milder.

We can argue about the precise number of lives lost, but it truly isn't reasonable to say that none are lost for reasons similar to the abovementioned.

Well, everyone knows that Obamacare is just Romneycare writ large, and a recent study of mortality rates in Massachusetts since the enactment of Romneycare in 2006 has found a benefit in lives saved.  Published in the American College of Physicians' "Annals of Internal Medicine," was the article, "Changes in Mortality After Massachusetts Health Care Reform: A Quasi-experimental Study."  The synopsis' conclusion says this:

"Health reform in Massachusetts was associated with significant reductions in all-cause mortality and deaths from causes amenable to health care."

It found that extending health coverage to 830 adults saved a life a year.  The New York Times estimated that extending the same principle to Obamacare's potential effect would mean 17,000 fewer deaths a year.

One last thing, the percentage of Americans without health insurance is dropping.  Gallup, well known as a Republican-leaning polling organization, recently made this pronouncement in a headline:

"U.S. Uninsured Rate Drops to 13.4%: Uninsured rate down nearly four percentage points since late 2013."

This is progress.  We can go to war and spend trillions upon trillions of dollars to avenge the deaths of 3,000 Americans from a one-time, large-scale terrorist attack, so when 45,000 Americans die annually from lack of health insurance then I think we should do a lot more about that too.  That's a mortality rate 15 times worse every single year, not just once.

Some people will beat up on me for saying this stuff, but they don't have any other answer to the problem than "tough."  I'll be called a loser (like I don't expect it) because my personal situation has steered me to using gladly Obamacare.  But these same people who are almost certainly going to jump down my throat in the comments section would do nothing in the face of the problem.  45,000 Americans dead each year?  To them, those deaths are more desirable than using the government to address a public policy problem.  They never have any other answer except "personal responsibility" - which ineluctably means 45,000 dead each year.

I'll never get over the Republican debate in 2012 when Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul if society should let uninsured people die, and some in the audience felt secure enough in their milieu to hoot their approval.  That's the Republican alternative to Obamacare for you.

Don't think I haven't noticed the discrepancy between the declared harm of 45,000 lives lost and the suggested promise of 17,000 saved, because I have.  I don't have an exact answer to that except to say that it's unreasonable to say that no lives are lost due to lack of health insurance.  In 2009, the number of uninsured was about 16.1 million.  45,000 is .3% of the uninsured population at that time.  That's not exactly an outlandish estimate.