I noted that it was virtually impossible to mount an honest defense of the current U.S. health care system. Doing so would amount to suggesting that the obscene wealth of a few health care insurance company CEOs and their Wall Street investors has a greater social value than the lives of 18,000 of our fellow citizens whom the current system annually sentences to death simply because they are too poor to purchase insurance coverage.

Today, as I mulled over the legislative obscenity that Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) and a former vice president of WellPoint spent months preparing —- an insurance carrier wish-list that contains no public option, no means for controlling costs or abuse; a measure that does not merely protect but expands the already obscene wealth of the few by mandating that every citizen purchase insurance, with massive subsidies flowing into carrier coffers —- I learned that I was wrong…

The 18,000 figure I relied upon was based on a now outdated 2002 study performed by the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine. Today, there is a new Harvard University study which has been released by the American Journal of Public Health. Our corrupt and dysfunctional system does not sentence a mere 18,000 Americans to death each year because they can’t afford coverage. Our system kills close to 45,000 each year due to lack of coverage —- 45,000 in addition to the still uncounted numbers who die when carriers refuse to authorize vital procedures.