Paul Krugman: Why the Republicans are the Party of Death.
It is amazing how these hysterical Republicans love to project.
For lower-income working Americans, lack of health insurance is quickly becoming the new normal. That's the implication of survey results just released by the Commonwealth Fund, a nonpartisan organization that studies health care. The survey found that 41 percent of nonelderly American adults with incomes between $20,000 and $40,000 a year were without health insurance for all or part of 2005. That's up from 28 percent as recently as 2001.
Many of the uninsured reported spending their entire savings on health care and/or that they were having difficulty paying for basic necessities. And most uninsured adults reported cutting corners on medical care to save money — failing to fill prescriptions, skipping medications, going without preventive care.
Taken together, these stories tell the tale of a health care system that's driving a growing number of Americans into financial ruin, and in many cases kills them through lack of basic care. (The Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, estimates that lack of health insurance leads to 18,000 unnecessary American deaths — the equivalent of six 9/11's — each year.) Yet this system actually costs more to run than we would spend if we guaranteed health insurance to everyone.
As Krugman asks at the end, wondering why we don't have universal coverage, "Why don't we just do it?"
I'll tell you why -- Because of something called Iraq. And that is yet another can of worms -- 180,000+ civilians dead, 2,400 of our troops, all of the sake of a war in which Bush can't explain what the Noble Cause is. And then, the Republican Party has the nerve to claim that the lives of cells are more important than the lives of people.
Something stinks, and it is not just the smell of death. It is the smell of the Culture of Corruption in which there are three new scandals a day, and the President has a whole list of laws he thinks he can just choose to disregard. If this does not add up to the Party of Death, then I want to know what does.
No wonder the Bush administration chooses to scapegoat Muslims, immigrants, and the poor.