Joe Lieberman, Mass Murderer?

Posted by Michael F. Cannon

So insinuates the Washington Post‘s Ezra Klein, who writes that, because Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) does not support the health care legislation forwarded by Senate Democrats, Lieberman “seems willing to cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to settle an old electoral score.”

In a subsequent post, Klein relies on the Institute of Medicine’s methodology — which has been used to estimate that 22,000 Americans die each year from lack of insurance — to conclude that the Senate bill would save 150,000 lives over 10 years.  He further claims that “Medicare saved lives.”  (In fairness, Klein writes that he’s not accusing opponents of murder.  When he writes of Lieberman’s willingness to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths, maybe he’s thinking of mass negligent homicide. Or something.)

On Twitter, Klein writes, “People are oddly resistant to talking about the impact of [health care reform] on lives. Do they think insurance has no connection to mortality?”

Indeed, health insurance does have a connection to mortality.  But I’m pretty sure Klein doesn’t know what it is, mostly because people with more expertise and fewer axes to grind don’t know what it is.

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