At a town hall on Friday morning, Rep Raul Labrador (R-ID) told those challenging his support for Trumpcare (the AHCA): “That line is so indefensible. Nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.”
Many Republicans argue something like this, that lacking insurance doesn’t kill people. This is of course technically true. Or to put it more precisely, it may appear true in the abstract. You can have nominal insurance and either not use it or not be able to use it to get life-saving care. Or you can lack insurance and still get medical care at emergency rooms or county hospitals. In practice of course this leads to worse outcomes for numerous reasons. Indeed, this 2009 Harvard Medical School study suggested that nearly 45,000 Americans die every year because they lack health insurance. That other argument is one you can make in abstract terms. It’s really a semantic point about the role of insurance coverage in regulating access to care.
But it is factually false that no one ever died for lack of access to health care. People die of that constantly. This is definitionally true. It’s in the nature of what health care is.
Labrador said too declaratively the false and damaging line other Republicans – or perhaps better to say, Republicans who don’t believe the government has a role or responsibility to make sure people can get quality, reliable medical care – say all the time.
Here’s the video …
