re: #605 Obdicut

Because I don’t know anything about the circumstances of his death. Again, do you? Do you know that he didn’t get early treatment because he lacked insurance? If you do, then obviously that’s a very important point. But I haven’t seen anything that said that.

Because his death may not have been preventable. Lots of people with insurance die of pneumonia too; it’s a bastard. My friend Chuck just barely survived a bout of it— he’s immuno-compromised.

Single payer doesn’t ensure that nobody dies of pneumonia ever again. I do think it has an overall positive effect on life expectancy, but it’s a relatively mild one. What it does mainly is to hugely increase quality of life for people, and to affect the economics in a large and beneficial way.

While we do not have enough facts in this case to know if his death could have been prevented if he had insurance, and if he sought treatment earlier. It is a fact that people without health insurance will die from preventable illness more often than those with insurance.