Universal Care Saves Lives...

TW: On a day when a douche bag like Joe Lieberman is getting the publicity he so slavishily craves by screwing over his former party, it is good to re-visit yet again why health care reform is important. What does it mean in terms of lives saved if uninsureds are integrated into our deeply flawed system?

From Ezra Klein at WaPo:
"...The Institute of Medicine developed a detailed methodology for projecting the lives lost due to lack of insurance...We're very comfortable talking about the financial cost of health-care reform. We're less comfortable talking about the human benefits. But the fact that health insurance saves lives isn't controversial. A 2003 study examining cancer records from Kentucky found that uninsured women with breast cancer were 44 percent likelier to die than their insured counterparts. And that was after controlling for demographics, stage of diagnosis and initial treatment. A 2007 study found that the uninsured were 24 percent to 56 percent likelier to die of stroke, depending on the type. That study, too, controlled for all the relevant variables...

All this is intuitive. The uninsured are less likely to seek early care. They are less likely to get good care. They are less likely to return for follow-up care. They are less likely to be able to afford the maintenance of chronic conditions. At its most basic level, that's what this is all about. That's why people have been fighting for universal health care for almost a century now. That's why this matters, and why the basics of the bill -- subsidized access to health-care insurance -- are so terribly important. This is life and, well, death. Lots of it, in fact.

...Medicare saved lives. Medicaid saved lives. The health-care coverage that costs the average worker more than $13,000 saves lives. That's why we shoulder these expenses. And health-care reform will save lives, too. That's why we're doing it..."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/12/the_150000_life_health-care_pl.html