Healthcare Perspective From Kristof
September 13th, 2009at 01:34pm Posted by Eli
He’s probably not the first to make either point (I’m sure I’ve seen at least one of them before), but they’re still good ones:
Indeed, if Nikki had been a felon, the problem could have been averted, because courts have ruled that prisoners are entitled to medical care.
Of course, the flaw in this line of argument is that the Republicans would simply use it as a rallying cry to take healthcare away from prisoners…
[S]omeone dies in America [every half-hour] because of a lack of insurance, according to a study by a branch of the National Academy of Sciences. Over a year, that amounts to 18,000 American deaths.
After Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 Americans, eight years ago on Friday, we went to war and spent hundreds of billions of dollars ensuring that this would not happen again. Yet every two months, that many people die because of our failure to provide universal insurance — and yet many members of Congress want us to do nothing?
I sure would like to see the Republican response to this one, though. If 9/11 was The Most Terrible Tragedy Evar, worth unlimited dollars and lives to avenge and prevent the repeat of, then how is it that trying to save six times as many lives every year elicits only cries of, “It’s too expensive!” and “No government takeover of healthcare!”? Are Republicans only willing to spend money on killing people rather than saving them?
Entry Filed under: Healthcare,Media
