Sen. Angus King may have gotten a little carried away last week when he denounced those trying to prevent uninsured people from signing up for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act as “guilty of murder.”
But only a little.
King feels passionately about this issue, in part because he credits the availability of health insurance for saving him from a life-threatening skin cancer when he was 29.
It is a well-established fact that people without health insurance are more likely to die than those who have it.
This correlation has been established in a variety of studies dating back to the early 1990s.
Between 25,000 and 45,000 people die unnecessarily each year because they lack access to health care.
They pay the ultimate penalty because the U.S. can’t figure out how to do what practically every industrialized nation has done — insure all of their people at a reasonable cost.
It’s a sad kind of American exceptionalism.
The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and the editorial board.
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