If Right-Wingers Get Their Way, 22,000 Americans Will Continue to Be Killed by Lack of Health Care Each Year

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted August 13, 2009.

The right-wing anti-Obama-care movement is OK with killing off tens of thousands of Americans each year.

That's what this is all about: The right-wingers and their corporate sponsors are protecting a medieval and violent health care system that kills more Americans each year than all the Americans who have died in the war on terror since 2001, including the 3,000 victims of 9/11, and the 5,000-plus U.S. service members who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Every two months, the American health care industry is party to the slaughter of more Americans than al-Qaida managed to kill. Osama bin Laden must look at the Tea Baggers, FreedomWorks, health-industry billionaires like Rick Scott and the rest, and think, "If only I could kill as many Americans as they do! These guys are pros!"

They need to answer for this -- they need to explain why they are trying to protect a system that kills 22,000 Americans per year -- a figure based on a landmark report by the prestigious Institute of Medicine.

In fact, 22,000 is a conservative figure -- one of the authors of that report thinks the real figure in 2006 alone was 27,000 Americans killed from our health care system, perhaps as high as 40,000. But I'll stick to the conservative casualty number of 22,000, which is horrific enough.

If you believe in making health care available to every American, there's no reason to be skittish about talking about it on these terms. The right wing sure as hell isn't: in fact, its whole argument against health care reform is a hypothetical, future-tense dystopia of Americans murdered by their government, a fiction invented by hired marketing whizzes.

It's winning the "debate" based on a lie that hasn't even happened, whereas in this present-tense reality we all inhabit now, one American dies every 24 minutes because of this health care system.

It's time we protect ourselves and those we love, and that means stopping this slaughterhouse and saving Americans.

That's why health care reform isn't the place for wonkish debate and complicated rational arguments -- this is a battle to protect ourselves from people who are fine with their fellow citizens dying in horrible pain, not a debate-club tournament.

The right-wing thugs crashing Obama-care town hall meetings don't seem to mind being party to the mass murder of Americans, because they hate our freedoms.

For example, the freedom to elect a president whom they disagree with, or whose skin color they find repulsive. These goons hate Americans so much that they're willing to get violent -- actually, that's almost redundant, because it's like saying, "They're willing to get violent in order to kill 22,000 of us."

But that's how it is: They're attacking anyone who threatens to pull the plug on a health-care monster that's responsible for slaughtering some 200,000 Americans this decade.

If you go back to the first successful campaign to destroy first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care program in 1993, then the total number of Americans killed is well over 300,000 -- that's more than the 292,000 Americans who died fighting Fascism in World War II. Let me repeat: Since 1993, more Americans have been killed by our health care system than were killed on the battlefield in World War II.

It's no coincidence that the same rat who led America into the disastrous war in Iraq -- pundit Bill Kristol -- is the same one who led the fight against health care reform in 1993 and 2009.

Kristol has more American blood on his hands than a thousand Benedict Arnolds -- he was party to the slaughter of more than 4,000 Americans in Iraq and the death of America's geopolitical power. And with health care, Kristol has been one of the health care junta's prime ideologues, resulting in deaths of a few hundred thousand Americans here at home. Not that he's hiding it. Kristol himself wrote recently, "This is no time to pull punches. Go for the kill."

Let's take Kristol at his word -- he sees Americans trying get the sort of health care he has, and his response is to "Go for the kill." And that's exactly what they're doing: killing us.

So let's stop pretending that the health care battle is a "debate," because it's not.

It's a fight, a struggle to the death, to avoid death and suffering. The right wing understood this long ago, and that's why its winning -- again. The right-wingers are fighting for a system that kills Americans for their personal profit. And like colonial overlords, they're now unleashing hired thugs to attack anyone who threatens their riches.

See more stories tagged with: health care, mark ames, rick scott

Read more of Mark Ames at eXiledonline.com. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond.

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