"The moral argument for universal healthcare is simple: more people receiving medical care means fewer preventable deaths.
If universal healthcare, such as single-payer, leads to less death, then it is obviously the superior moral choice.
Politicians like Bernie Sanders will go a step further and claim that Republican legislation, in fact, kills people by reducing government-sponsored coverage.
Yet, what if there were evidence to suggest that more people would die under a universal healthcare scheme than under the current US system?
What if, by the left’s standards, the American healthcare system is less of a killer than the average European one?Consider the best estimates of how many people die in the US due to a lack of healthcare.
The question is hotly contested, and approximations range from 0 to 45,000 people per year.
The latter figure is obviously what most progressives prefer to cite, and although there’s much to doubt about this number, let’s for the sake of argument accept that approximately 45,000 fewer people would die in the US every year if all Americans had decent health insurance.
Now flip the question:
How many people die in other countries due to deficiencies in their healthcare systems?
...A study by the Fraser Institute titled The Effect of Wait Times on Mortality in Canada estimated that “increases in wait times for medically necessary care in Canada between 1993 and 2009 may have resulted in between 25,456 and 63,090 (with a middle value of 44,273) additional deaths among females.”
Adjusting for the difference in populations (the US has about 9 times as many people), that middle value inflates to an estimated 400,000 additional deaths among females over a 16 year period.
This translates to an estimated 25,000 additional female deaths each year if the American system were to suffer from increased mortality similar to that experienced in Canada due to increases in wait times.
A system that disproportionately harms women?
How progressive..."
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