Funds Spent This Year By the Health Care Lobby Would Have Insured All Those Who Died From Lack of Insurance

The health care sector has spent $263 million this year lobbying Congress for changes to reform plans, a government watchdog group estimates.

That’s a huge amount of money. How many people could purchase health insurance with that much money? According to USA Today, the average health insurance premium for an individual is $4824. Dividing $263 million by $4824 tells us that 54,500 individuals could have purchased health insurance with the funds spent by the health care sector in their lobbying effort this year.

Last month, we learned that 45,000 people a year die in the US due to lack of health insurance. Think about that for just a minute. The amount of money being spent in an attempt to prevent health care reform is more than enough to purchase insurance for all of those who die due to lack of coverage. Of course, we can’t predict ahead of time which of the 46 million uninsured Americans will be the ones to die from this lack of coverage, but the equivalence of the lobbying funds spent with what it would cost to cover those who die is still a striking example of the priorities of those who want to protect their obscene profit stream.