Today TPM reports that former Florida govenor Charlie Christ, who is running against Medicare-fraud perpetrator Governor Rick Scott to regain the the governorship of that state, spoke some home truths to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd:
About a million of my fellow Floridians are not getting health care today, and I am told by friends SEIU (sic), that means six people in Florida die every day as a result of that. Every day,” Crist said.
[…]
It’s not hard to figure that out. It’s common sense. Look at it. If people are sick, and they aren’t getting health care, what happens? They usually get sicker,” Crist said. “Or they die. I mean, those are just the facts, Chuck. That’s what happens. In addition to it, it’s economically stupid. As a result, we’re not getting $51 billion over the next 10 years for the health care institutions in Florida. So the people get better health care, so that kids don’t get sick, that we take care of people. That’s what public servants are supposed to do. That’s why I’m running against Rick Scott, because he’s not a good servant.”
The claim that six people will die daily if Medicaid is not expanded likely comes, as TPM noted, from a joint Harvard University and City University of New York report published last month. You can quibble about the actual amount – it’s an estimate after all – but the point that people will die while ideologues posture and babble incoherently about “government dependency” and the “unsustainable costs” involved in directing federal tax dollars back to the home state.
What does this factoid mean for Missouri? Approximately 2190 deaths yearly that could have been prevented.
But we can take it farther. Most Republicans oppose expanding Medicaid and most Democrats support it. In the Missouri Senate 24 members are Republicans; in the House there are 106 Republican representatives, making a total of 130 Republicans running things in Jefferson City. We can do some rough math and conclude that if Medicaid is not expanded, each Republican in the legislature will be responsible for the death of 16.8 Missourians per year, give or take a few.
A crude, tongue-in-cheek exercise perhaps? But no matter, it’s a sure bet that there will be deaths as a result of the action – or rather inaction – of Missouri Republicans. And no matter how you count our dead fellow Missourians, they’ll amount to quite rack of trophies for each Missouri GOPer..