The Deadly Lack of Health Insurance

People who oppose universal health insurance because it will just raise their taxes should remember they have blood on their hands.
http://prorev.com/2005/03/pro-few-lives-anti-lot.htm

PROGRESS REPORT - According to the Institute of Medicine, lack of health insurance already "causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States." Since President Bush took office the number of Americans who are uninsured has swelled by more than 5 million people. Now he's poised to make the situation worse. President Bush is proposing significant funding cuts to Medicaid and the related State Children's Health Insurance Program. Bush's 2006 budget slashes funding for the programs - which provide vital health coverage to 1 in 6 Americans and 1 in 4 children - by more than $20 billion over five years. According to Heather Boushey, an economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, "the cut would make 1.2 million children unable to access the system." Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) said of Bush's proposed Medicaid cuts: "[P]eople need to remember that to balance the federal budget on the backs of the poorest people in the country is simply unacceptable. . .

Bush's proposed budget significantly reduces funding for the Women, Children and Infants (WIC) program - "a major preventative against low-weight babies." In 2010, for example, Bush's budget would cut funding for the program by $658 million, which would require eliminating coverage for 660,000 women.

Bush's statement about his intervention in the Schiavo case implies that he is a champion for the well-being of the disabled. Not quite. He is proposing "to stop financing the construction of new housing for the mentally ill and physically handicapped." The program has existed for three decades.