More than 1.5 million vets do not have health insurance

When veterans die -- from lack of health insurance
More than 1.5 million vets don't have it, and 2,200 vets die every year because of it
By Joan Walsh
It's Veterans Day, and members of both parties compete to show service members the most respect. How about passing health insurance reform?

Two Harvard researchers chose today to release a study showing that 1.5 million American veterans have no health insurance, and more than 2,200 die every year because of it. Working-poor veterans are at particular risk -- they earn too much money to qualify for certain Veterans Administration programs, but they work in jobs that don't provide insurance and they don't earn enough to buy it themselves.

"The uninsured have about a 40 percent higher risk of dying each year than otherwise comparable insured individuals," David Himmelstein, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program, told Agence France Presse. "Putting that all together you get an estimate of almost 2,300 -- 2,266 veterans who die each year from lack of health insurance." Fourteen times as many vets died for lack of health insurance than were killed in Afghanistan last year.

Meanwhile, conservative Sen. Tom Coburn continues to block a needed veterans' healthcare bill because it's too expensive.
read more here
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/politics/2009/11/11/veterans_day/