Words.
"...American life expectancy appears to have been longer in 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945 — even as hundreds of thousands of young Americans were being killed in World War II — than it had been when America was at peace in 1940.
A prime reason is that with the war mobilization, Americans got much better access to medical care. Farmers and workers who had rarely seen doctors now found themselves with medical coverage through the military, jobs in industry or New Deal programs.
In short, great health care is often less about breakthrough technologies than it is about access. And for all the disagreements about President Obama’s health care proposal, let’s focus on this: it unquestionably would increase access, while its defeat would diminish access.
...Partly because of lack of access, American health statistics are notorious: Our children are two-and-a-half times as likely to die before the age of 5 as children in Sweden. American women are 11 times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as Irish women. The average person in Honduras or Vietnam is expected to live longer than the average African-American in New Orleans.
...The tide of history has taken us and other Western countries toward steadily greater access to medical coverage — until recent reversals in the United States. Put aside quarrels over the mechanisms used to pass the bill, and focus on the central question of Americans’ access to decent medical care. On that issue, those trying to kill this health care reform proposal are simply on the wrong side of history."
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